David de Rothschild: Voyage of the PlastikiInside the Plastiki Headquarters at San Fran's Pier 31

Text by Thayer Walker, read previous coverage of this expedition here

The view from Pier 31 makes a pretty good case for those who would argue that San Francisco is the world’s most beautiful city. To the east, the Bay Bridge connects the city to Treasure Island and beyond; Alcatraz, a prison as stunning as it was notorious, sits in the middle of the bay; and Coit Tower and the Transamerica Pyramid cast long shadows over San Francisco’s famous hills. From the roof, you could probably see the Golden Gate Bridge.

So it’s almost offensive that in a city with property values like San Francisco's, a massive pier with multi-million-dollar views could sit more or less empty, but alas that’s how de Rothschild found it when he chose San Francisco as his launching point.

The city, says de Rothschild, was a logical home for the Plastiki. “San Francisco is a very progressive city. It has banned plastic bags and has shown a great deal of support for the values that we are trying to represent.”

As with every aspect of the project, de Rothschild faced challenges getting the space. The Port Commission greeted his initial overture with incredulity. It’s not every day that a swashbuckling banking heir requests a space in bay-front property to build a boat out of trash. But thanks to de Rothschild’s unmistakable sense of purpose and support from Mayor Gavin Newsom, the doors, quite literally, opened.

When I stroll in on a gorgeous day in early January, however, the problem folks seem most concerned about is a door that won’t close.

One of the pier’s 30-foot-tall metal roll-up doors is jammed. After a few futile efforts tugging on the door chain, the guys from 1-800-GOT-JUNK hop on the hood of their truck and start banging the door with a sledgehammer.

Despite de Rothschild’s blue-blood lineage and his luxury watch sponsor, this feels like a guerilla operation. At this point, there’s no formal office space, so Adventure Ecology Event Manager Kevin Williams sits on a folding chair next to a browning Christmas tree at the “command center,” the dusty corner of a concrete support pillar where the telephone and modem reside.

The 20-foot Plastiki prototype hangs from the ceiling. “We tested that in the Bay,” de Rothschild explains, “and it performed better than anyone anticipated. We got up to eight knots.”

Every success is hard earned, happily embraced, and quickly followed by yet another challenge. The project sometimes suffers from a shortage of plastic bottles, which will compose the catamaran’s twin hulls.

“We’re waiting for another shipment,” says de Rothschild. “We’re having a lot of problems with that.”

“We’re having a lot of problems in general,” quips Expedition Coordinator Matthew Grey.

The door, however, ceases to fall into that category. After ten minutes of hammering and yanking, the guys finally clang it shut, and everyone gets back to work.

David de Rothschild, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and founder of Adventure Ecology, will depart in Spring 2009 on a 11,000-mile voyage from San Francisco to Sydney (see the route map) in a boat made of plastic bottles. Find out more about the expedition in a feature article by Contributing Editor Paul Kvinta ("Voyage of the Plastiki," October 2008 issue of ADVENTURE). Check in here for updates.

David de Rothschild: Voyage of the PlastikiHow to Build a Plastic-Bottle Boat

Text and photographs by Thayer Walker

Once you move past the fact that they both float, two-liter plastic bottles and sailboats share little in common. To David de Rothschild, this is good news. To his boat builder, Mike Rose, it is not. (Read previous dispatches >>)

When de Rothschild began toying with the idea in 2006 of turning a voyage to the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch into a television documentary, he ran the idea by his buddy, philanthropist and former eBay president Jeff Skoll. Skoll liked the idea, de Rothschild says, but he kept coming back to one concern: where’s the drama?

“‘I mean you’re out there, on a boat, taking trash out of the ocean,’ de Rothschild recalls Skoll saying, ‘and that’s an interesting thing. But where’s the drama?’ I thought that was a good point.”

Which brings us to plastic bottles.

They litter the back end of San Francisco's cavernous Pier 31, HQ for the Plastiki operations. Some are displayed as a wall of art, some sit in a large fish net hanging from the ceiling as future building materials, and some are piled about in their most common incarnation, as trash.

“Bottled water has become a symbol of convenience more than anything,” says de Rothschild. “The best question to ask is, ‘When did we get so thirsty?’”

The bottles, some 20,000 of them, will fill out the catamaran’s twin hulls. De Rothschild sources them from local recycling centers, but he’ll only select 20 percent of the bottles they bring, and the failure rate of those is 20 percent. Before the crumpled discards make the unlikely leap from trash to boat material they must go through laborious refurbishing.

“I think the recycled bottles will perform just as well as new ones,” says Rose, the boat builder, who really has no idea how new plastic bottles would perform on a 11,000-mile trans-Pacific voyage, “but there is a huge cost involved.”

De Rothschild is an aesthetic. He wants only clear bottles, so first they are sorted by color. Then the labels are peeled, the cigarettes removed, and the bottles washed. “There are a lot of cigarettes,” says Rose. “It’s a dirty job.”

Lastly, comes bottle CPR, where crushed and crinkled bottles are brought firmly to life with a scoop full of dry ice.

I ask bottle technician Malin Ulmer to demonstrate the process. She’s reluctant. “I’ve already burned my hands a lot today,” she says while pouring a scoop of dry ice into the crunched bottle.

The ice sublimates into carbon dioxide gas and the bottle expands. A typical car tire requires around 36 pounds per square inch of pressure for proper inflation; the pressure inside this bottle is around 55 pounds per square inch. Sometimes the bottles explode but the team has done strength tests by running them over with a car. It’s all very scientific.

Once the trashed bottles are properly revived, they’re ready to fit into the plywood model of the hull. Two-liter bottles aren’t particularly hydrodynamic and Rose must outfit the bottom of the hull to make sure the bottles all lie flat. Like much of this process, it’s a tedious exercise of trial and error.

“We can’t design the hull with the basics of naval architecture,” says Rose, “we have to design it for bottle alignment.” Hopefully, the Pacific Ocean won’t be able to tell the difference.

David de Rothschild, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and founder of Adventure Ecology, will depart in Spring 2009 on a 11,000-mile voyage from San Francisco to Sydney (see the route map) in a boat made of plastic bottles. Find out more about the expedition in a feature article by Contributing Editor Paul Kvinta ("Voyage of the Plastiki," October 2008 issue of ADVENTURE). Check in here for updates.

David de Rothschild: Voyage of the PlastikiBuilding the World's Most Unlikely Boat

Text by Thayer Walker; Boat rendering and photograph courtesy of Adventure Ecology

Last October, we brought you the story of David de Rothschild, the British explorer who plans to sail 11,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco to Sydney in a 60-foot catamaran made of used two-liter plastic bottles and other recyclable materials. Readers responded vigorously (read their comments).

Without stepping off of dry ground, de Rothschild and his team have already faced a host of challenges, but now comes the hard part: building, and then sailing, the Plastiki. Departure date is set for the end of April, so over the next several weeks we will take you behind the scenes where, in a vast and otherwise empty pier overlooking San Francisco Bay, one of the world’s most unlikely boats is taking shape. See a photo gallery of the Pier 31 workshop >>

The Plan 

David de Rothschild’s plan to sail across the Pacific Ocean, from San Francisco to Sydney in a 60-foot catamaran made of used two-liter plastic bottles, isn’t just an adventure. It’s a crusade. “Our philosophy of throwing everything away has to change,” says de Rothschild. “I want to use the Plastiki as a platform to help people think of waste as a resource.” 

Since 2005, de Rothschild’s has used his company Adventure Ecology to promote his expeditions and help teach school children about environmental issues like global warming. With the Plastiki, he hopes to capture a wider audience and do more than just raise awareness. “I don’t want to just highlight the problem,” de Rothschild says, “I want to find solutions.” 

The plywood model of Plastiki’s cabin sitting in San Francisco’s Pier 31 illustrates the point. On each leg of the trip, one of the six berths will be set aside for scientists from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who will study topics like ocean acidification, coral bleaching, and marine debris and publish a paper at the end of the trip. 

De Rothschild says that the Plastiki will be 100 percent recyclable. The boat’s framework, made of self-reinforced polyethylene terephthalate (PET), demonstrates how unconventional thinking can yield more ecologically sensitive alternatives. “If we have the ability to sail across the Pacific in this—and I have no doubt that we do—it could revolutionize the way people build pleasure boats,” he says. “It’s not going to show up in the America’s Cup, but our vessel could influence the whole industry. That outcome, regardless of if we make it across the Pacific, would be the success of the expedition.”

Through the Sculpt the Future Foundation, the non-profit arm of Adventure Ecology, de Rothschild is also creating the Smart Competition, which he hopes will catalyze people into action. A cash grant will be awarded in five categories—science, marketing, research, art and industrial design, and technology—for solutions that will, as de Rothschild puts it, “beat waste.” Stay tuned for more information on this.

 

David de Rothschild, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and founder of Adventure Ecology, will depart in Spring 2009 on a 11,000-mile voyage from San Francisco to Sydney (see the route map) in a boat made of plastic bottles. Find out more about the expedition in a feature article by Contributing Editor Paul Kvinta ("Voyage of the Plastiki," October 2008 issue of ADVENTURE). Check in here for updates.

David de Rothschild: Voyage of the PlastikiVideo Peek the Birth of the Boat

Here's a little update from David de Rothschild and our friends working on the Plastiki. Their departure date is now schedule for late April or early May. Stay tuned for updates from our Plastiki correspondent.

Until then, learn about this incredible (dangerous, foolish, and innovative) expedition on the very cool Adventure Ecology website.

David de Rothschild, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and founder of Adventure Ecology, will depart in Spring 2009 on a 7,500-mile voyage from San Francisco to Sydney (see the route map) in a boat made of plastic bottles. Find out more about the expedition in a feature article by Contributing Editor Paul Kvinta ("Voyage of the Plastiki," October 2008 issue of ADVENTURE). Check in here for de Rothschild's dispatches.

David de Rothschild: Voyage of the Plastiki Message in a Bottle—Reconsidering Plastic

One thing I find interesting about waste and trash is the way it’s viewed and disposed of tends to sit differently within Western culture than other parts of the world. Outside of the West, there is almost an inherent recycling culture and sense of responsibility to reuse because waste is fundamentally a resource, either for financial gain or simply because the materials are reusable.

I think that the most important thing is not to make plastic the enemy, but to really reassess how we use, dispose, and reuse it. It comes down to the old cliché of stopping to think before you buy. Can you reuse the bottle that contained the water or soda you drank earlier? The small things can make a big difference. We can all minimize our impact if we fundamentally change the way in which we consume. Certain absurdities—like wrapping perishable vegetables in something that can last five hundred years in the ground—just don’t make any sense. We need to go full cycle, and go back to targeting packaging—either minimizing it or getting rid of it entirely—where it is just not necessary. The biggest change we can make is to rethink our buying habits and create more demand for positive change.

David de Rothschild, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and founder of Adventure Ecology, will depart in March 2009 on a 7,500-mile voyage from San Francisco to Sydney (see the route map) in a boat made of plastic bottles. Find out more about the expedition in a feature article by Contributing Editor Paul Kvinta ("Voyage of the Plastiki," October 2008 issue of ADVENTURE). Check in here for de Rothschild's dispatches.

David de Rothschild: Voyage of the Plastiki A Megatransect of the Pacific

In the case of the Plastiki, we wanted to raise awareness of the challenges our oceans and its inhabitants face by creating an expedition that reaches across the whole of the Pacific, from San Francisco Bay to Sydney Harbour. It would be short-sighted of us to solely focus on the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch. I wanted to place it within the context of the whole of the Pacific Ocean. This expedition will give us a platform to explore and highlight a number of the issues, such as the sinking islands of Tuvalu, the effects of mass pollution due to sub-water testing of nuclear armament and coral bleaching. We also want to tell positive stories about communities who are learning alternative ways of creating income now that the fisheries have been closed due to over-fishing.

Through this megatransect, this journey, we hope to captivate, inspire, and activate people to connect and share in the wonders across the whole of the Pacific and share with us in witnessing the overwhelming effects of global warming on ecosystems and our planets inhabitants.

The whole journey will be about gathering information by using a combination of visual media and scientific data to map and measure ecological conditions along the entire route. We will be taking daily scientific readings including wind directions, water temperature and water samples as well as shooting lots of underwater photography and footage, which will hopefully not only provide valuable measured data on environmental trends but also chart and create a story across the Pacific. 

Our highlights will be the combination of the planned stops and the unknowns. From previous experience I have found that during an expedition what you expect is often not what you get and, where you have to try to plan for the unexpected, it is often the moments that come totally out of the blue that create the highlights either emotionally, physically or mentally. It’s those unexpected challenges that make an exciting expedition.

David de Rothschild, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and founder of Adventure Ecology, will depart in March 2009 on a 7,500-mile voyage from San Francisco to Sydney (see the route map) in a boat made of plastic bottles. Find out more about the expedition in a feature article by Contributing Editor Paul Kvinta ("Voyage of the Plastiki," October 2008 issue of ADVENTURE). Check in here for de Rothschild's dispatches.

David de Rothschild: Voyage of the PlastikiDestination: The Eastern Garbage Patch

When I first starting looking into how we could make an expedition around waste, I came across a report by Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who actually discovered and named the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which talked about this vast expanse of debris in the middle of the Pacific Ocean held in place by swirling underwater currents. My initial reaction was, Wow, there’s an island of rubbish floating in the middle of the ocean that you can walk on and explore.

However, when I investigated the facts, it became clear that the reality is a bit different. It's not really an actual plastic island. The reality is that this area of ocean is saturated with tiny fragments of plastic suspended mainly below the surface of the water, forming a sort of plastic soup. When we finally get there, were not really expecting to see anything astonishingly different on the surface of the water. We will see more of the effects of the plastics when we take samples of the water and measure the fragments of suspended plastic, like shaking a snow globe.

I will definitely be diving and exploring throughout this expedition, not just exclusively at the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch. The team and I will be doing routine dives to check the bottom of the vessel and make sure that the integrity of the boat is holding up to the journey and that we are not losing any bottles. We will be we be doing a number of dives when we reach a point of interest, whether it be a whale sighting or where we see flotsam.In truth, I am a bit of a merman. It will be difficult to keep me out of the ocean.

David de Rothschild, a National Geographic Emerging Explorer and founder of Adventure Ecology, will depart in March 2009 on a 7,500-mile voyage from San Francisco to Sydney (see the route map) in a boat made of plastic bottles. Find out more about the expedition in a feature article by Contributing Editor Paul Kvinta ("Voyage of the Plastiki," October 2008 issue of ADVENTURE). Check in here for de Rothschild's dispatches.

David de Rothschild: Voyage of the PlastikiFive Tips For Young (at Heart) Adventurers

1) Aim big.
Don’t be afraid to aim for the thing you really want the most. In other words, follow your dreams.

2) Find a good team.
It’s essential to have a strong support network of people around you who can help throughout the expedition from the planning stages through to the actual journey itself.

3) Always test your equipment thoroughly before you go.
You don’t want to end up getting out into the field and realizing your boots are too small or your backpack is rubbing your shoulders.

4) Make sure that you document everything from the moment you start planning, all the way through the expedition.
Create as much content as possible in and around your expedition--the one thing you will regret is missing photographs and footage. As a sub note, I would definitely recommend keeping a diary so that when you get back, you can match up all your film and photographs with dates and locations.

5) Last, and by no means least, have fun.
There will always be highs and lows to any adventure. It’s important to embrace and learn from them both. It’s not the end of the world if things go wrong, so don’t panic. Roll with it and enjoy every moment.

Read de Rothschild's dispatches >>

David de Rothschild, a National Geographic Visiting Fellow and founder of Adventure Ecology, will depart in March 2009 on a 7,500-mile voyage from San Francisco to Sydney (see the route map) in a boat made of plastic bottles. Find out more about the expedition in a feature article by Contributing Editor Paul Kvinta ("Voyage of the Plastiki," October 2008 issue of ADVENTURE). Check in here for de Rothschild's dispatches.

Photograph by Gregg Segal

David de Rothschild: Voyage of the PlastikiBuilding a Boat of Out of Plastic Bottles

David de Rothschild, a National Geographic Visiting Fellow and founder of Adventure Ecology, will depart in March 2009 on a 7,500-mile voyage from San Francisco to Sydney (see the route map) in a boat made of plastic bottles. Find out more about the expedition in a feature article by Contributing Editor Paul Kvinta ("Voyage of the Plastiki," October 2008 issue of ADVENTURE). Check in here for de Rothschild's dispatches.

Boat Building 101
Text by David de Rothschild

Our main objective has been to create a vessel constructed out of plastic bottles that not only performs in the water, but also showcases smart and innovative design solutions that re-think waste as a resource. However, from the day of this project's inception to the day we started construction of the boat, our team has been confronted with huge challenges to overcome.

Our first major hurdle was figuring out how to maintain the integrity of the bottles. We did not want to simply melt down the plastic and re-mold it. The actual visible presence of bottles has been at the core of everything. Staying true to that idea has created an enormous learning curve, since water would actually flow through and around the bottles. This goes against the basic principle of boat building: keeping the water out. Here, we are letting all the water in.

But things are now on track. We have tested the prototype out in San Francisco Bay. The good news is, it floats. The bad news is that it only sailed backwards! We still have quite a way to go.

We are working with a number of experts in the boat-building field, including our onboard naval architect, to tackle these challenges and translate the initial conceptual design into a sailable vessel. Together we hope to create a vessel that will not only perform, but show how you can reuse waste as a resource using cradle-to-cradle philosophies.

The vessel itself will tap a number of technologies that are pushing the boundaries within alternative energies. We have broken the design of the boat into different areas--waste, energy, water, and habitat--so you will see a real cross-section of technologies. Some are actually available in mainstream markets, while others that are currently being developed in laboratories. I want to keep a few surprises back, but let’s just say there will be an element of human composting involved.



Read more about de Rothschild's voyage and other big thinkers in "ADVENTURE's Leading Edge" >>



Photograph courtesy of Adventure Ecology