Plastiki sydney

July 26th, 2010 by admin | Posted under NEWS.

The Plastiki is a distinctive boat, one-of-a-kind 60-foot (20m) catamaran made out of 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles and other recycled PET plastic and waste products. The Plastiki’s bottles are lashed to pontoons and held together with recyclable plastic and glue made from cashew nut husks and sugarcane, while its sails are also made from recycled plastic. The craft was built using cradle to cradle design philosophies and features many renewable energy systems, including solar panels, wind and trailing propeller turbines, and bicycle generators.

The Plastiki, which takes its name from Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl’s 1947 Kon-Tiki expedition from South America to Polynesia on a raft of balsa husks, set off from San Francisco in March. the boat’s overall design and sail plan only permits it to sail with the wind just forward of
her beam – she is a down-wind vessel. in keeping with the design ethos there are no
centreboards so the boat sometimes goes sideways, as well as forward.

After nearly 8,000 nautical miles at sea the Plastiki is finally drawing closer to its final destination of Sydney. The crew arrived in Australian waters last Sunday and since then have been travelling down the Gold Coast with the help of some brilliant tow boat crews, stopping in Mooloolaba and Southport on the way as they sheltered from incoming weather fronts.

More than just a boat, the Plastiki symbolizes how waste can really become a resource, taking on the intimidating task of sailing from San Francisco to Sydney. De Rothschild, inspired by a news story about the “garbage patch” floating in the Pacific Ocean, spent the last several years developing the Plastiki along with “a handpicked crew of leading scientists, adventurers and creatives.”

Palstiki The United Nations Environment Programme says more than 15,000 pieces of debris litter every square kilometre (0.4 square miles) of the world’s oceans, and another 6.4 million tonnes of plastic is dumped into seas each year. Plastiki will be on display in front of the maritime museum, sydney until august 1st, 2010. plastiki sydney