San Francisco to Sydney
A unique 60ft catamaran engineered from 12,500 bottles has set sail on a more than 11,000 nautical mile journey from San Francisco to Sydney.
Environmentalist David de Rothschild and his intrepid crew; Jo Royle, David Thomson, Olav Heyerdahl along with National Geographic filmmaker Max Jourdan and Myoo Media’s Vern Moen hope the voyage will make people awarene of pollution in the world’s oceans.
On route the eco-friendly boat, which is powered by solar, wind and sea turbines, will go past the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – a pile of floating waste about five times the size of the UK.
“With more efficient design and a smarter understanding of how we use materials, principally plastic, waste can be transformed into a valuable resource, in turn helping to lessen our plastic fingerprints on the world’s oceans,” said Rothschild.
The journey is expected to take around 100 days and the crew will even power their laptops with an exercise bike.
The Plastiki is engineered almost entirely from 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles that provide 68% of the boats buoyancy.
A unique recyclable plastic material made from srPET makes up her super structure
The mast is a reclaimed aluminum irrigation pipe
The one-of-a-kind sail is hand-made from recycled PET cloth
The secondary bonding is reinforced using a newly developed organic glue made from cashew nuts and sugar cane
Follow the trip on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Plastiki
www.theplastiki.com