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Four months on a plastic boat

27 July 2010 00:24 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Plastiki sailed 14,000 kilometres across the Pacific to raise awareness of plastic waste in the oceans, APA reports quoting abc.net.au website.

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Four months on a non-leaky boat, and considering what it’s made of, that may surprise some people.

The crew of the plastic bottle boat Plastiki sailed through Sydney Heads today after an 8,000 nautical mile mission across the Pacific Ocean to get rid of waste.

Karen Barlow reports.

KAREN BARLOW, REPORTER: 12,500 plastic bottles glistened in the sun as the Plastiki slid past the whales, into Sydney Harbour, under the Bridge and to its new home as an exhibit at the National Maritime Museum.

Adventurer and banking heir David de Rothschild and his six crew members have brought an end to a four-month voyage and a four-year dream.

It began in San Francisco - a project to create a clever catamaran out of plastic bottles to attack what Mr De Rothschild calls a "dumb problem".

DAVID DE ROTHSCHILD, PLASTIKI EXPEDITION LEADER: We’ve got this crazy problem with plastic in our ocean that is not abating. We got this addiction to single-use plastics.

KAREN BARLOW: The Earth’s oceans are large and so is the problem. The United Nations says plastics can be found in every corner.

ELLIK ADLER, UN ENVIRONMENT PROGRAMME: Still, in some places of the world, the ocean is seen as this endless toilet in which you can dump everything into it.

KAREN BARLOW: The UN’s environment program says attitudes are changing, but not fast enough.

ELLIK ADLER: The quantities of plastic that go every year into the ocean, 6.4 million tonnes of plastics every year - this is not an endless dustbin. And if we continue to behave like this, if we turn our oceans into a dustbin, we eventually - all of us are going to pay the price.

KAREN BARLOW: The Plastiki crew found an ecological quagmire as they crossed the North Pacific.

DAVID DE ROTHSCHILD: When I got underneath the vessel, started to swim underneath, looking around at the bottles and then you start to see flecks of plastic in front of your face and you realise this is a major, major problem.

KAREN BARLOW: It’s a subsurface mass of microscopic plastic degraded by salt and sunlight. At least five continent-sized layers of sludge exist on the planet.

JO ROYLE, PLASTIKI SKIPPER: ... to reinforce the fact that we’re all sea creatures and that our life is dependent on the health of the oceans and it’s really made me feel very empowered and I want to hit the ground running into the next mission to continue to talk about the oceans through adventure.

KAREN BARLOW: The modern-day adventurers say Plastiki is no publicity stunt. They say people need to recycle more, rethink waste as a resource and start an outright ban on single-use plastic items.

DAVID DE ROTHSCHILD: Right now, to the politicians who are standing there trying to win our vote or win the vote, or win the vote, you know, think about the environment. That is gonna be really the most important thing that we have.

KAREN BARLOW: Have you been keeping a little eye on the Australian election?

DAVID DE ROTHSCHILD: I have. I’ve been keeping a little eye on it, and I’m gonna stay out of it. I think that’s probably the wise move. What I will say though is: we’ve got to move past the short-term populist vote; we have to start creating legislation that actually is protecting ourselves, future generations and allowing us to reintegrate into the web of life.

KAREN BARLOW: David de Rothschild says the warning signs of a sick planet are welling up under the sea.