Recycling Activist

On a pier in California, British environmentalist David de Rothschild, author of Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook, is building a 60-foot catamaran made from recycled plastic. This boat will sail from San Francisco to Australia. According to CNN de Rothschild cleverly named the boat, “Plastiki.” Plastiki is being created in an effort to raise awareness of the recycling of plastic bottles, which he says are a symbol of global waste.

Thousands of two-liter soda bottles are being stripped of their labels, washed, filled with dry-ice powder and then resealed. The dry ice sublimates into carbon dioxide gas and pressurizes the bottle, making it rigid. Skin-like panels made from recycled PET, a woven plastic fabric, will cover the hulls and a watertight cabin, which sleeps four.

“This actually is the same material that is made out of bottles,” said de Rothschild to CNN. “We actually wrap the PET fabric over the PET foam and then basically put it under a vacuum, heat it, press it and create these long PET panels. So that means the boat is, technically, one giant bottle.”

Other parts of the boat include two wind turbines and solar panels to charge on-board laptop computers, a GPS and SAT phone. Only 10 percent of the boat is being created with new materials, including the masts.

“The idea is to take Plastiki, break it down [after the voyage], and put it back into the system. So, it may come out being a jacket, a bag, more bottles. It’s infinitely recyclable,” de Rothschild said to CNN.

Plastiki is set to sail from San Fransisco in April, with De Rothschild and a few others. They anticipate stops in Hawaii, Tuvalu, Fiji and then plan to arrive in Sydney. The voyage will take about 100 days.

This trip is going to be over 11,000 miles and dangerous. I’m mean seriously, it’s a boat made out of plastic bottles…how reliable can that be? Out of respect for de Rothschilds efforts at recycling awareness, we should all be making those extra few steps to place our bottles into the recycling bins.