Beautiful Bottle Boats and the Flotsam Flotilla

Floating in the Pacific Ocean there is an island twice the size of Texas (potentially larger!), made of plastic and garbage. What can be done with this garbage, and the garbage you are about to throw away, it's garbage right? Wrong, it's a resource that can be used to do many things. Like what? Put a plastic bottle in a tub filled with water and what does it do? That's right it FLOATS. Look at what some people have done with not only plastic but that other environmental swear word, styrofoam (it takes 500 years for one cup to dissolve!).


"'El Padrino', the brainchild of recycling enthusiast Jesus Roman of Guaynabo, is a functional kayak made of 2 liter Pepsi bottles lashed to a PVC frame."
Created as part of an event to draw attention to the issues of the coast around San Juan Island, PR. Via Surfrider Foundation


"Balachandra Kurup, who used to work in a Gulf country, thought of a plan not only to reduce pressure on the environment from the PET bottles but also to put them to productive use. He used discarded bottles to fabricate a small rowing boat, in which he rows in the Paravur Lake."
He will build them for people with a three year guarantee and had ferried his own family across Paravur Lake. He states, "PET spares for the boat will always be in stock." via The Hindu


"A floating raft home, made of salvaged lumber and floating on chunks of styrofoam. In the early 1990's The Floating Neutrinos set off across the Atlantic using the only the wind and current to push their boat all the way to the coast of Ireland and then on to France."
via The Floating Neutrinos, log on for their latest adventures and news.

And the greatest of these is The Plastiki (please click and give a pledge!), at this moment still on the seas nearing their destination of Sydney, Australia. EDIT, PLASTIKI HAS ARRIVED!!! Read all about it here!


It is a catamaran made of plastic bottles.

(All the Flickr photos from Plastiki here!)

It just crossed the Pacific Ocean from San Francisco, USA. What more proof does anyone need to say, yes stop making more garbage and think of the amazing things it can do. You can also recycle and reduce your use of single-use plastics and say, let's make this a resource that will no longer be called trash but a thing of a different kind of beauty.

David de Rothschild creator of the Plastiki Expedition

EDIT, Thank you Plastiki! :)