Eco warrior on voyage to 'plastic soup' of Pacific

By sailing a plastic boat David de Rothschild is trying to highlight alternative uses for the material. Photo / AP

In a few weeks, the heir to one of the world's greatest fortunes, David de Rothschild, will set sail across the Pacific in the Plastiki, a boat made from plastic bottles and recycled waste.

The aim of the venture is to focus attention on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a rubbish-covered region of ocean, several hundred kilometres in diameter.

The patch, north-west of Hawaii, was discovered in 1999 by researchers who found that its waters contained tens of thousands of pieces of plastic per square kilometre, the remains of rubbish caught in the region's circulating ocean currents. This pollution is devastating populations of seabirds and fish that live in the region.

During his trip, which is being sponsored by the International Watch Company and Hewlett-Packard, de Rothschild will collect water samples and post blogs, photographs and video clips, to try to publicise the perils of plastic pollution.

To further highlight the plastic pollution problems, the 30-year-old environment crusader has designed a special catamaran with a hull made of frames filled with 12,000 plastic bottles. The cabin and bulkheads of Plastiki have also been constructed out of a special recycled material called srPET, made of webs of plastic.

"The plastic water bottle epitomises everything about this throwaway, disposable society," said de Rothschild, who trained to be a showjumper in England and who has trekked to both the North and South Poles. However, he added that he was not aiming to demonise plastic, but was trying to highlight its alternative uses, as well as focusing global attention on the dangers posed to the ecology in regions such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

The Plastiki - its name inspired by the balsa raft Kon-Tiki that was built and sailed across the Pacific in 1947 by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl - is undergoing trials in San Francisco harbour.

"The project has gone through several materials, exploring everything from bamboo to plywood, even playing around with the idea of sewing all the bottles together in one giant sock," said de Rothschild.

The 20m catamaran has cost several million dollars to construct and has taken three years to reach this design. It will carry de Rothschild and a crew of six on a 2720km journey from San Francisco to Hawaii, Midway Island, Bikini Atoll, Vanuatu and, finally, Sydney. There will be no accompanying craft, but the Plastiki will be met by a support team at each landfall.

The destinations have been selected to highlight a variety of environmental threats, including overfishing and climate change. However, the most important part of Plastiki's route will be its voyage round the garbage patch in the north-west Pacific, where it will focus global awareness on marine debris and pollution.

The patch was discovered 10 years ago by the oceanographer Charles Moore when he was sailing off Hawaii. "I was confronted, as far as the eye could see, with the sight of plastic," Moore later recalled.

Among the items he spotted were plastic coat hangers, an inflated volleyball, a truck tyre and dozens of plastic fishing floats.

"In the week it took to cross, no matter what time of day I looked, plastic debris was floating everywhere: bottles, bottle caps, wrappers, fragments." Indeed, the term "patch" does not begin to convey the nature of the phenomenon, Moore added. A "plastic soup" has been created, he said, one that has spread over an area that is now bigger than the state of Texas.

The plastic, most of it swept from coastal cities in Asia and California, is trapped indefinitely in the region by the North Pacific Gyre, a vortex of currents that circulate clockwise around the ocean.

Scientists estimate that there is six times more plastic than plankton by weight in the patch and that this is having disastrous ecological consequences. Fish and seabirds mistake plastic for food and choke to death. Plastics also absorb pollutants including PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and pesticides, bringing poisons into the food chain.

In one study, scientists found that populations of albatrosses in the north-west Hawaiian islands, a national marine sanctuary, have been devastated by plastic from the garbage patch.

"Their body cavities are full of huge chunks of many types of plastics, from toothbrushes to bottle caps to needles and syringes," said Myra Finkelstein, an environmental toxicologist based at University of California, Santa Cruz. "They can't get them up. They can't get them out. It's heartbreaking."

This point is backed by Moore. "The plastic gadgets one typically finds in the stomach of one of these birds could stock the checkout counter at a convenience store," he said.

Last year, a raft built of waste and debris, known as the Junk Raft, was built by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, which had been set up by Moore after discovering the garbage patch. This craft floated on a mass of 15,000 plastic bottles and was sailed by oceanographers Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal. They too were aiming to highlight the global issue of plastic pollution in the oceans.

However, de Rothschild says he is seeking not just to show up the planet's ecological woes but, through the design and construction of Plastiki, he will be highlighting how disposable plastics can be used in a constructive way.

"I want the Plastiki to make a statement that it's our lack of reuse, uses and disposal that is at fault, not the material itself," he said.

The eco-warrior has also designed his mission so that it copies features of the voyage of the Kon-Tiki, in which Heyerdahl sailed across the Pacific to show how ancient South American Indians could have colonised Polynesia. As a result, de Rothschild set his leaving date for April 28 - 62 years to the day when Heyerdahl set out on his epic journey. However, teething problems forced him to postpone his departure.

Nevertheless, de Rothschild insists his craft will sail in the next few weeks and could one day revolutionise the use of recycled plastics and the design of boats. Much will depend on how his craft behaves once the expedition is under way, he admitted to the New Yorker. His craft should perform well, but could break up, he said.

"These are just unknowns," he added.

"That's an adventure. If it was planned and everyone knew, no one would be interested."

LIFE OF ELIGIBLE 'ECO-TOFF'

David de Rothschild regularly appears in Tatler's list of Britain's most eligible bachelors. He is the third child of Victoria Schott, a former fundraiser for the right-wing Conservative Party, and Sir Evelyn de Rothschild, head of the British branch of the family banking empire.

He was a member of Britain's junior eventing team, and has taken part in trekking expeditions across the Antarctic and Arctic icecaps, making him the youngest Briton to reach both poles. He owns a New Zealand organic farm, and founded Adventure Ecology which aims to use his travels as a way to engage children in green issues.

He is also author of the Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook. In 2007, these feats earned him inclusion in the National Geographic's class of Emerging Explorers. He is also known as one of the country's leading "eco-toffs", those young men and women who use their inherited wealth to promote environmental causes.

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