{"id":482609,"date":"2010-03-28T19:20:11","date_gmt":"2010-03-28T23:20:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.circleofblue.org\/waternews\/?p=13800"},"modified":"2010-03-28T19:20:11","modified_gmt":"2010-03-28T23:20:11","slug":"eco-explorer-david-de-rothschild-begins-trans-pacific-journey-on-catamaran-of-plastic-%e2%80%94-the-plastiki","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/482609","title":{"rendered":"Eco-explorer David de Rothschild Begins Trans-Pacific Journey on Catamaran of Plastic \u2014 the Plastiki"},"content":{"rendered":"

The voyage and vessel are designed to redefine global use, and reuse, of plastic.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"Eco-explorer<\/p>\n
Photo © 2009 J.Carl Ganter for Circle of Blue.<\/div>\n
Environmentalist explorer David de Rothschild, 31, set sail on March 20 on his boat of recycled plastic bottles, the Plastiki.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

De Rothschild and his crew of five set sail March 20 on perhaps the first-ever crossing of the Pacific Ocean that’s being measured in plastic bottle lengths.<\/p>\n

Today, as of 7 p.m., the Plastiki \u2014 a 60-foot catamaran with a hull made of 12,500 plastic bottles \u2014 had traveled 76 nautical miles. That equals roughly the length of 481,536 plastic bottles.<\/p>\n

And those hundreds of thousands of bottles are only .0080 percent of the bottles thrown away by Americans today, according to The Plastiki Expedition Web site<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n
PLASTIC DEBRIS<\/strong><\/div>\n
Of the six million tons of debris that enter our oceans every year, nearly 90 percent is plastic.<\/div>\n
Today, there is an average of 46,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer in the ocean. As the plastic degrades, attracting toxins, it gets digested by animals and eventually infiltrates the food chain and can potentially be consumed by people.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The entire project aims to focus global awareness on the thoughtless, unnecessary damage plastic inflicts on the world\u2019s oceans. And potentially guide people towards more constructive ways to re-use plastic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I hope that the Plastiki does and what we stand for is not about vilifying people, pointing fingers or just articulating problems,\u201d de Rothschild told Circle of Blue<\/a> in October. \u201cWe are about challenging that thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the next 90 days the crew, directed by skipper Jo Royle, will travel about 11,000 nautical miles from San Francisco, California to Sydney, Australia. The so-called Great Pacific Garbage patch is a focal point of the expedition. Ocean currents from North American and Asian shores sweep along floating plastic, funneling it towards the island of trash, which is already larger France and Germany combined.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a vivid illustration of the roughly 50 percent of all plastic products that end up in the ocean. The patch also has serious implications for pollution. Project Kaisel<\/a> at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography is testing the patch for toxins like Polychlorinated Byphenyls (PCB) and DDT that have serious health impacts if they\u2019re absorbed into fish consumed by people.<\/p>\n

\"Plastiki.\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Photo \u00a9 Luca Babini for Plastiki<\/div>\n
The Plastiki leaves San Francisco, Calif. for its trans-Pacific voyage, March 20, 2010.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This expedition is as much about demonstrating the responsible reuse of plastic as drawing attention to its problems.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first reaction that any environmentalist would go for is \u2018plastic is the enemy \u2013ban it,\u2019\u201d de Rothschild told Circle of Blue. \u201cLet\u2019s just think for a second and really evaluate \u2014 is it the material [that\u2019s bad] or is it our inability to understand how we use it, how we manufacture it, what are we using it for, and most importantly, how we dispose of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

De Rothschild has made a career of exploring ecological challenges, and using his wealth to popularize environmental issues. The youngest heir to the fortune of one of Europe\u2019s oldest and most respected banking families, he journeyed across Antarctica and explored the Greenland ice cap to witness the consequences of climate change firsthand. In 2005 he launched Adventure Ecology, an organization and a Web site that tracks his travels to inspire people to work for positive change for the planet.<\/p>\n

His Pacific plastic bottle mission is a way of reconnecting life style choices to nature, an idea that has become his mantra.<\/p>\n

Follow the Plastiki’s progress at the Plastiki Expedition Web site<\/a>. To read more about the de Rothschild expedition<\/a>, please see Circle of Blue’s earlier de Rothschild coverage<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

Sources: Plastiki Control Center<\/a>, SFGate.com <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The voyage and vessel are designed to redefine global use, and reuse, of plastic. Photo © 2009 J.Carl Ganter for Circle of Blue. Environmentalist explorer David de Rothschild, 31, set sail on March 20 on his boat of recycled plastic bottles, the Plastiki. De Rothschild and his crew of five set sail March 20 on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5510,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5510"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}