plastiki hullThey’re here! A huge collection of cast-off plastic bottles has docked in Sydney after completing a journey of well over 8,000 nautical miles and just over four months. Along the way the crew have seen an astounding amount of plastic debris and startlingly, next to no fish or sea life – well actually not all that surprising given that they have just sailed through the world’s largest plastic garbage patch.

The Plastiki set sail from San Francisco on 20 March 2010 – sailing under the Golden Gate Bridge – but she really began her adventure more than four years ago. Inspired by a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report called ‘Ecosystems and Biodiversity in Deep Waters and High Seas’ and the 1947 epic journey of The Kon-Tiki. These two elements spurred David de Rothschild to take action by devising the current expedition – all the time hoping to captivate, inform, activate and educate the world that waste is fundamentally inefficient design.

Waste is fundamentally inefficient design

In fact, the principles of “cradle-to-cradle” design, including biomimicry, are at the core of the whole adventure and intended to display the philosophy that “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”.

“Put simply, Cradle-to-cradle design is a holistic economic, industrial and social framework that seeks to create systems that are not just efficient but essentially waste free.” ... Wikipedia

Most notably the revolutionary Plastiki is made from 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles, each filled with CO2 in the form of dry ice – to help them maintain shape and buoyancy throughout the voyage. It doesn’t stop there though; almost all other components of the boat also demonstrate the same philosophy:

plastiki vertical garden

  • A unique recyclable plastic material called srPET, a self reinforcing PET, makes up her super structure

  • The masts are reclaimed aluminium irrigation pipes

  • The one-of-a-kind sail is hand-made from recycled PET cloth

  • The secondary bonding is reinforced using a newly developed organic and non-toxic glue made from cashew nuts husks and sugarcane

  • The Plastiki is also off-the-grid relying primarily on renewable energy systems including; solar panels, wind and trailing propeller turbines, bicycle generators, a urine to water recovery and rain water catchment system and a hydroponic rotating cylinder garden

The Journey

It’s been an epic voyage, and the final stages (from Samoa to Sydney) have included surviving a close call with a large storm bringing high seas and 62-knot winds that required ‘all hands on deck’.


The Arrival

As they head down the coastline of Australia with whales around they have seen more marine life than they have seen on the whole voyage and David reports "The crew is ecstatic and really excited to be in Australia. It's kind of emotional for me at the moment, as I haven't really absorbed the reality of our journey coming to an end yet."

plastiki bottles at daybreak

The Plastiki team were hoping to arrive on Sunday, but are now set to arrive at Sydney Heads on Monday 26 July 2010 at about midday. They will then continue to the Australian National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour, crossing under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, where they are scheduled to be met by NSW Premier Kristina Keneally. Everyone is invited dockside to welcome the crew!

This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it of the arrival of the Plastiki – and we’ll show them to the world.

The Plastiki will then be on display at the National Maritime Museum for the next month, with an open day planned for Sunday 1 August 2010.

"None of us likes the idea of fouling our own nest. But we are not good at thinking of the whole world as our nest."

It doesn’t end there

Want to hear more about this astonishing adventure first-hand? If you’re in Sydney, there are several events where you can catch David de Rothschild talking about his experience aboard the Plastiki, his journey across the Pacific Ocean, and the urgent need for a global message of hope and real world solutions to eliminate waste from our lives:

But wait there’s more

We also recommend checking out The Plastiki website – it’s full of great information, images and videos, plus you can join in and pledge to reduce plastic in your life.

Also see David de Rothschild’s Adventure Ecology website too to keep up with his future expeditions.


David de Rothschild is a UK-based environmentalist and the author of The Global Warming Survival Handbook, The Boy, The Girl and the Tree and the editor of Dorling Kindersley’s Earth Matters. He is the host of the Sundance Channel’s Eco-Trip: The Real Cost of Living and has been named as a National Geographic Society “Emerging Explorer” and a UNEP “Climate Hero.” In 2006, he spent more than 100 days crossing the Arctic and became the youngest British person to reach both poles.


Excerpt from Wikipedia:

Cradle to Cradle Design (sometimes abbreviated to C2C or in some circles referred to as regenerative) is a biomimetic approach to the design of systems. It models human industry on nature's processes in which materials are viewed as nutrients circulating in healthy, safe metabolisms. It suggests that industry must protect and enrich ecosystems and nature's biological metabolism while also maintaining safe, productive technical metabolism for the high-quality use and circulation of organic and synthetic materials. Put simply, it is a holistic economic, industrial and social framework that seeks to create systems that are not just efficient but essentially waste free.


More info on The Plastiki - from TreeHugger



The Making of The Plastiki - from The New Yorker



Written by Suze Chalmers

All images courtesy of The Plastiki