Plastiki

The Plastiki Expedition is an Environmental Action by David de Rothschild, with which the Department wishes to draw attention through plastic waste on the danger of the seas.

Background

With his trip de Rothschild demonstrated against the load of the oceans with plastic waste. The waste comes in part from the waste of ships' crews. However, the most abundant component is transported via rivers to the oceans. Since they do not decompose this waste, but only decay into smaller parts to microscopic, they pose a serious risk to the fauna of the seas. About the food chain the plastic particles in the stomachs of fish, marine mammals, turtles and seabirds. About fish landing persistent pollutants again in humans. According to the UNEP spokeswoman Elizabeth Guilbaud -Cox in Sausalito make plastics, especially in the form of bags and PET bottles around 80 percent of the total waste in the oceans from.

The ship crossed during the expedition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch Garbage Patch in the North Pacific, which has reached the size of Texas. He is one of six known enormous garbage swirls in the oceans. There, swim up to 200 000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer on the sea surface. In this case, most less than an inch in diameter. The latter is increasingly granulated, and so also gets into the food chain, has been proven today.

Expedition

First Rothschild planned on 28 April 2009, being the anniversary of the Kon-Tiki expedition to sail a raft made of plastic bottles and recycled materials the Pacific Ocean from North America to Australia. In early March 2010 his catamaran Plastiki was finally finished after three years of preparation. On 21 March, at 9:30 local time, the clock Plastiki stabbed with Rothschild and his crew in Sausalito, California, to Sydney. After about four months of the catamaran reached on July 26, the Sydney Harbour.

On a part of the track accompanied the grandson of Thor Heyerdahl, a Norwegian biologist, the expedition.

The expedition was accompanied by a modern media recovery. On the homepage of the expedition, the crew runs a blog and provides background information and links available. The trip was accompanied by a documentary of National Geographic. Among the sponsors of the expedition include a number of large companies.