12,500 plastic bottle are currently sailing around the world in a bid to beat waste, one bottle at a time!
The sailing catamaran, Plastiki, is made up of 12,500 plastic bottles and a whole heap of other recycled and re-used materials to help bring awareness to everyone about the harmful waste degrading the health of our oceans and planet.
For marine wildlife, fish and mammals it is an ever-increasing worry that the ingestion of plastic or entanglement in plastic and waste is dwindling fish stocks and increasing the loss of life in the worlds seas and oceans.
Plastikiand her crew, are sailing the world in the hopes to reduce the usage of plastic bottles, plastic bags and such like materials while promoting the 4 R’s- Reduce, Reuse, Rethink and Recycle! Currently, Plastiki has been at sea for 2616 hours/109 days, covering 6944 nautical miles. The trip started in San Francisco and they are heading to Sydney, Australia.
The aim is to raise 12,500 pledges to help beat waste by the time Plastiki reaches Sydney, Australia. You too can join in and help beat waste by going to the site and making your pledge. Click HEREto pledge. Just think- every plastic bottle ever made still exists today!
Billionaire, eco-warrior David de Rothschild has built a catamaran out of re-used plastic and re-cycled waste. He plans to sail ‘Plastiki’ from San Francisco to Sydney via the ‘Great Garbage Patch’.
The purpose of his journey, scheduled for late summer, is to highlight the floating plastic of the North Pacific Gyre; the enormous ‘garbage patch’ caught up in the swirling currents of the Pacific Ocean and which is now believed to have grown to the size of France or Texas. This pollution is now devastating populations of seabirds and fish that live in the area.
“The plastic water bottle epitomises everything about this throwaway, disposable society,” says de Rothschild, who originally trained to be a showjumper and who has trekked to both the north and south poles. However, he added that he is not aiming to demonise plastic, but is trying to show its alternative uses, as well as focusing global attention on the dangers posed to the ecology in regions such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
During his trip, which is being sponsored by The International Watch Company and Hewlett-Packard, de Rothschild will collect water samples and post blogs, photographs and video clips of the area, in an attempt to publicise the perils of plastic pollution.
