Plastiki, Boat Made From 12,000 Recycled Bottles, Prepares To Sail Pacific Ocean (VIDEO)

San Francisco group Adventure Ecology took recycled materials to another level when they built the Plastiki, a durable ship kept afloat by recycled plastic bottles, ABC's Laura Marquez reported.

The group, spearheaded by David de Rothschild, used 12,000 bottles filled with carbon dioxide to construct the durable ship, and everything from the sail to the mast is made from plastic materials as well. The crew plans to set sail for a three-month voyage from San Francisco to Sydney, Australia, a trip they hope to begin within weeks, Marquez said.

De Rothschild hopes the ship's expedition will bring attention to the global waste problem.

"We're needlessly losing millions of seabirds and hundreds of thousands of marine mammals from ingesting plastic every year," de Rothschild told Marquez. "I decided to take this 'out of sight, out of mind' problem and build a boat out of the very items that we were seeing ending up in our natural environment."

One of the main sights they'll be highlighting along their voyage will be Great Pacific Garbage Patch, an unfathomably large stretch of trash that is twice the size of Texas.

WATCH Marquez's report on the Plastiki:

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Comments

[BannedNBoston]

"just want to make sure you realize how huge the pacific gyre garbage is - roughly twice size of texas.""
If they took 1,000 barges and started to work at it they could get it done.
The Rothschilds are incredibly rich selfish people that grandstand for publicity like Richard Branson.

[Dredd]

A lot of people don't know that the gyre is a continent sized flotsam realm twice the size of Texas, and there is another one, probably larger, in the south pacific.

http://blogdredd.blogspot.com/2009/08/new-continent-found-garbage-gyre-ii.html

[slycowboy]

Thank you Mr de Rothschild. Go one step further and help place a tax on corporate manufactuers of plastic raw materials to establish a world fund to cleanup their cheap products after their useful life has passed. They make billions of dollars and leave the world with landfills, beaches and garbage patches full of their product. Also- do not make non-recyclable plastics- period. I am so happy that there are progressive folks like Mr. Branson and Mr. de Rothschild to counter all of the corporate mis-deeds. I wish there were more of them.

[Franklin Print]

"I am so happy that there are progressive folks like Mr. Branson and Mr. de Rothschild to counter all of the corporate mis-deeds."

Well, "some," not all.

[richnerd]

I went to Bintan Island in Indonesia just Southeast of Singapore...and the beaches were COVERED with plastic debris. Bottles, thongs, rope, styrofoam, and worse, little bits of plastic pieces literally mounded in piles and ridges indicating the high tide mark.

It would be an eye opener if HP asked readers to send photos of beaches and plastic debris around the world. I would love to start a website but can't afford it.

[Das Hirschenhofer 11]

Set one up @ Spruz.com...It's free and you can get your voice onto the net my friend. Work on it there, put up a pay pal on your site..then buy your own. Good luck. Because the world should see these islands of disgust! I really believe all the worlds CEO's should have to spend a week looking around these places, then maybe they might be willing to do something after they witness a death or twelve of seabirds?
For the first time in my life, I am glad Jacque Cousteau is dead, if he wasn't this would kill him. Though I would like to point out a question. No doubt man/woman had a lot to do with this...but how much of it is the result of tsunami's and hurricanes? Just curious that's all?

[BannedNBoston]

Look if the ROTHSCHILD'S AND Richard_Branson Really wanted to get rid of the ocean plastic [patch they could.
You take a bunch of old barges chop and drain the plastic;
AND MICROWAVE IT INTO DIESEL!!!

[HarrietteTheSpy]

just want to make sure you realize how huge the pacific gyre garbage is - roughly twice size of texas.

[Das Hirschenhofer 11]

Size is not the issue here, it's how productive an operation like this be?

[Das Hirschenhofer 11]

Great idea, but can you really..hold on a sec....

"All that is needed, claims Global Resource Corporation (GRC), is a finely tuned microwave and - hey presto! - a mix of materials that were made from oil can be reduced back to oil and combustible gas (and a few leftovers)."

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12141-giant-microwave-turns-plastic-back-to-oil.htmll"

OK, I can see this working...Like I said...great Idea!!!

[Angie Cordeiro - Huffpost Blogger]

Using waste as a resource, talk about the genius of thinking differently!

[rf dude]

OH, BTW - the captain of the former Ady Gill is probably still available.

Just don't let him play chicken with Japanese fishing vessels...

[rf dude]

" Twice as big as Texas " is not "Unfathomably large" - it's just twice as big as Texas...

[COPerez]

As a descriptor of a stretch of human wastes in the middle of the ocean, "twice as big as Texas" IS unfathomably large.

Have you ever driven across Texas on I 10? When you first get on the highway near El Paso the mile markers have FOUR DIGITS on them. Without exhausting yourself the drive take 2 really full days of driving and part of a third day. At 70 mph most of the way.

Now imagine you are driving all that distance with nothing to see but trash. Everywhere.

[rf dude]

I suppose, giving you the doubt of the benefit, that your mind might indeed

conceive as unfathomable a road sign with FOUR whole digits.

It might even be " inconceivable " to you...

[KIVPossum]

Plastic bottle held to the hull with wire ties? Sounds like a recipe to dump more plastic in the ocean

[PlayTOE]

So this environmental plan is to take MORE plastic to the great pacific garbage dump?
Call this 3 months of enviro-tourism with zero value to the ecology.

[COPerez]

We're all talking about it, right?

If instead of bit**ing about it, you talked to 5 of your friends about it and they talked to five friends... etc., etc. We could reach a critical mass of people calling for action. I'd say that has some value to the ecology.

[peowlemeow]

How about renting a floating recycling plant and picking up the garbage.I have been hearing about this patch and people just keep watching it grow.If floating fisheries can process fleet sized catches.Why can't there be a way of packaging this trash and sinking it or turning it into diesel and burning it or just scooping it up and burning it (with filters for the carcinogens).I don't need to see another struggling animal.I'd like to give money to people removing blights like this trash or building glaciers as fast as global warming destroys them.

[LyssaBarnes]

Ditto and fanned.