Incredible Boat Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles Unveiled in San Francisco

David De Rothschild and friends have been tooling around for some time on an ambitious project to build a seaworthy boat out of recycled plastic bottles. Late last week, the crew finally shared their vision, The Plastiki, to the world in San Francisco Bay. The Plastiki will sail 11,000 miles from San Fran to Sydney, Australia to raise awareness about plastics as a pollutant and its value as a recycled product.

The sailboat is made from 12,500 recycled plastic bottles and an innovative, buoyant and exceptionally strong material made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a polyester resin commonly used in plastics. The mast is reclaimed aluminum irrigation pipe and the sail is handmade from recycled PET as well. While engineering the boat, the crew of designers also developed an interesting new organic glue made from cashew nuts and sugar cane — a product, said De Rothschild to Treehugger, that could remove epoxies from boatbuilding.

It is that spirit of ingenuity that was the inspiration for the Plastiki project. What started out as an idea to build a boat from plastic bottles to raise awareness about plastic in our oceans and landfills (some 80 percent of plastic bottles still reach landfills rather than recycling plants, says De Rothschild) grew into a movement addressing problems and discovering solutions about what we can do with all that plastic floating through our economies, resting in our landfills and bobbing on our waterways.

As if 12,500 recycled plastic bottles didn’t make the Plastiki green enough, it is also primarily powered by renewable energy. That includes solar power panels, wind turbines, trailing propeller turbines and bicycle generators. It also uses urine-to-water recovery and rain catchment systems to produce fresh water and even comes equipped with a rotating cylinder hydroponic garden.

Last week, the Plastiki crew christened the boat with a traditional Polynesian ceremony at the Marina in San Francisco. Right now, they are working on final preparations for their trans-Pacific journey. You can track the Plastiki’s progress when the voyage does begin at ThePlastiki.com, and I highly recommend watching this video at Treehugger.

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