PHOTOS: Plastic Bottle Catamaran Crosses Pacific

Plastiki's Stern

Photograph courtesy Adventure Ecology

Pacific waters pass by Plastiki’s stern as the one-of-a-kind vessel crosses the Pacific from San Francisco to Sydney. The ship’s recycled and repurposed plastic construction wasn’t its only environmental statement. The stern-mounted solar panels visible here helped power the crew’s sustainable, “off the grid” lifestyle. Plastiki also made use of wind and trailing propeller turbines, bicycle generators, a urine-to-water recovery system, rain water capture, and even a hydroponic garden.

Published July 28, 2010

Sea Spray Splash

Photograph courtesy Adventure Ecology

During 128 days at sea Plastiki proved sturdy and seaworthy, but life aboard the ship meant experiencing the ocean up close and personal—as this soggy crew member can attest. From the dock in Sydney Plastiki’s happy skipper, British sailor Jo Royle, said the relationship was one of the journey’s great benefits—and a universal reality they tried to share with others.

“A lot of us don’t feel a connection to the sea and we live without realizing that every breath we take, every drop of water we drink is connected to the ocean whether we’re living in San Francisco or Idaho,” Royle said.

Published July 28, 2010

Buoyant Bottles

Photograph courtesy Adventure Ecology

One man’s trash is another’s treasure: the old saw is brought to life by the empty bottles that give Plastiki most of her buoyancy. David de Rothschild envisioned the ship as a stark example of how the smarter use of plastics could turn today’s trash into a viable, valuable material while preventing millions of tons of waste from fouling Earth’s oceans.

The crew found plastics were ubiquitous in even the most remote Pacific waters. Millions of microscopic bits, called “Mermaid’s Tears,” enter the ocean food chain at the very bottom while larger pieces kill countless birds, marine mammals, and sea turtles each year.

Published July 28, 2010

Dry Ice Betters Bottle

Photograph by Ben Margot, Associated Press

Building Plastiki was an adventure in itself—one that consumed some 120,000 man hours from start to finish. Many of the techniques used to create the unique ship were invented on the fly. Here Rio Vizmanos adds dry ice to an empty plastic soda bottle in order to strengthen it for use in construction of the vessel. Though plastic drink bottles are recyclable, de Rothschild said, only about 20 percent of them are actually recycled—and the story is the same or worse for many other types of plastic.

Published July 28, 2010

Plastiki Near Fiji

Photograph courtesy Adventure Ecology

A photographer captured this jellyfish-eye view of Plastiki as the ship neared Fiji. The boat gets most of her buoyancy from discarded plastic bottles and her super structure is made of a unique, recyclable plastic called Seretex. Even Plastiki’s sails were hand made from recycled PET cloth.

The only structural part of the ship not made of plastic is her mast. For this critical component de Rothschild’s team tapped a reclaimed aluminum irrigation pipe.

The ship was christened Plastiki in a nod to Thor Heyerdahl’s legendary 1947 Pacific expedition, the Kon-Tiki.

Published July 28, 2010

De Rothschild Aboard Plastiki

Photograph by Robert Galbraith, Reuters

David de Rothschild emerges from the cabin to give Plastiki a once-over during a test sail in San Francisco Bay. De Rothschild founded Adventure Ecology and is a National Geographic Emerging Explorer (National Geographic News is owned by the National Geographic Society).

Four years ago he conceived of the boat and journey as a way to demonstrate that staggering amounts of plastic wastes were the result of bad patterns of plastic use and disposal—not inherently evil plastic. Inefficient design means most plastic still ends up in a landfill or in the ocean, de Rothschild said, when it might be seen as a viable and valuable resource. This fixable problem is undermining the health of Earth’s oceans.

Published July 28, 2010

Happy Jo Royle

Photograph by Daniel Munoz, Reuters

Her voyage at an end, Plastiki skipper Jo Royle exults as the ship is towed through Sydney Harbor on July 26. The crew braved waves, winds, and weather in a largely untested craft but succeeded in both crossing the Pacific and sparking thought about how to make smarter use of plastics to reduce waste.

“Humans are so capable, so creative and able to make a difference,” Royle said. “We can all make a difference.”

Published July 28, 2010