An unusual ship landed in Sydney Harbor yesterday. A ship made entirely of used plastic bottles, dubbed The Plastiki, sailed from San Francisco to Australia. The journey, helmed by banking heir and established sailor David de Rothschild, was designed not to test the limits of human endurance or of plastic’s whale-proof ship-making strength, but it was designed to bring attention to the plight of the world’s seas. It seems that all the buzz about the Gulf of Mexico was starting to overshadow the Pacific Ocean’s massive garbage island and ocean dumping in general.
“You go a couple of hundred miles off the coast, and nobody is claiming responsibility,” Rothschild said. “Which allows people just to do what they want, and allows them to abuse the ocean’s depth, and its so-called scale. The Plastiki is literally a metaphorical message in a bottle about beating waste and reducing our human fingerprints on our natural environment.”
Say what you want to about plastic: for better or worse, that stuff can last forever (and it makes a great boat). As for The Plastiki, the ship will go on display at the Australian National Maritime Museum for the next month.
Tags: Sydney, Australia, Plastiki, ship made of plastic bottles sails across the Pacific Ocean, David de Rothschild, unusual ships, unusual vehicles, publicity stunts, environmentalism, Australian National Maritime Museum
