After floating on plastic for more than 9,000 miles, the crew of the Plastiki arrived in Sydney, Australia today, more than four months after the ship set sail from San Francisco. The boat of 12,500 bottles was the brainchild of David de Rothschild, who sought a way to bring more of the world's attention to the problem of discarded plastic bottles and their tendency to wind up in the ocean.
He figured a good way to prove that trash can be effectively reused was to use some of it to build a boat. The Plastiki ... is fully recyclable and gets its power from solar panels and windmills. The boat is almost entirely made up of bottles, which are held together with an organic glue made of sugar cane and cashews, but includes other materials too. The mast, for instance, is recycled aluminum irrigation pipe [AP].
The crew of six ...
