Posts Tagged ‘plastic bottles’
Plastiki Wraps Up an 8,300-Mile Voyage
The Plastiki, a boat made of bottles that set sail from San Francisco in March, glided past the Sydney Opera House at midday local time Monday in a grand finale to a voyage intended to highlight the problem of plastic waste.
“Overwhelmed! Wow! Need to breathe. Wow! Wow! Wow!” read one of the final tweets from the boat, whose buoyancy relied on the 12,500 plastic bottles encased in its hull…
Underlining the vessel’s mission, Plastiki estimated at its Web site that 8.7 billion plastic bottles, give or take, had been used in the United States since it set out…
Wearing a pink cap and a mariner’s full beard, the leader of the expedition, David de Rothschild, 31, strode up the dock at Darling Harbor to a welcoming ceremony that included the American ambassador to Australia, Jeffrey Bleich. “The journey of the Plastiki is a journey from trash to triumph,” Mr. Bleich said, in a nod both to the boat’s recycled nature and its path through a large garbage patch in the Pacific.
We posted on the start of this adventure back in March. We can stop worrying about the voyagers, finally.
And return to worrying about what we all do to this small planet.
Taipei’s plastic bottle pavilion
A Taiwan company has built a three-storey exhibition hall using 1.5 million plastic bottles instead of bricks to raise interest in recycling, creating what the builder described as a world-first.
Far Eastern Group, a Taiwan-based conglomerate known for construction and financial services, commissioned the 130 meter long, 26 meter high structure almost three years ago and will donate it next month to the city government.
Builders took bottles from Taiwan’s waste stream for reprocessing into plastic containers that interlock strongly enough to block the elements and withstand storms or earthquakes, said Arthur Huang, managing director of the contractor Miniwiz Sustainable Energy Development Ltd.
No one else in the world had built an exhibition hall with walls made entirely of bottles, he said.
The pavilion, dubbed the EcoARK, includes an amphitheatre, museum space and a screen of falling water collected during rainy periods for air conditioning. The clear plastic containers in the wall allow natural light to flood the cavernous interior.
Just a single example of what can be constructed from society’s leftovers.
I’ve worked on similar projects here in the United States. This ain’t rocket science, folks. It just takes a willingness to innovate and make do with sensible technology vs. what has become the American ethic, e.g., Cheap is What Counts!.
There really is a difference between smart shopping vs. cheaping out.
The Plastiki sets sail
The Plastiki, a boat with a hull built of 12,500 plastic bottles, set sail from a Sausalito yacht harbor this morning on a risky and adventurous voyage across the Pacific.
The purpose, said expedition leader David de Rothschild, is to draw attention to the health of the oceans and to demonstrate the value of recycled plastic bottles. De Rothschild and his crew of five hope to sail to Australia, a voyage of about 11,000 nautical miles.
The Plastiki, named in honor of Norwegian explorer Thor Hyderdahl’s raft Kon Tiki, is a boat like no other in the world. Besides the hull of recycled plastic water and soda bottles, the vessel is made of a hardened plastic called PET.
The boat is a twin-hulled catamaran rigged as a ketch. It will rely on the wind for propulsion and has only a small auxiliary engine. No such boat has ever made an ocean passage before.
Skipper Jo Royle said the first port of call will be one of the Line Islands, a small group of atolls south of Hawaii.
The voyage can be followed on the Internet at www.theplastiki.com.
Bon voyage, folks. It ain’t ever easy with a craft this small.
