Across an ocean of rubbish on a recycled ship

Phil Mercer, Foreign Correspondent

• Last Updated: November 13. 2009 12:13AM UAE / November 12. 2009 8:13PM GMT

SYDNEY // In a bold attempt to highlight the damage to delicate marine ecosystems by household and commercial waste, conservationists are preparing to sail across the Pacific Ocean in a catamaran made entirely of plastic bottles and other recycled rubbish.

The construction of the 18-metre craft named the Plastiki is complex and with good reason. Awaiting the crew is an exhausting 19,446km voyage that will start in San Francisco and will chart a course through Hawaii, the Midway Islands and Vanuatu before journey’s end in Sydney in eastern Australia.

The project’s architects want to convey a simple, yet deeply alarming message about the dangers posed by a protracted act of environmental vandalism where a seemingly endless cascade of plastic refuse, including bottles, shopping bags and debris from fishermen has been slowly choking parts of the ocean. When it leaves California, the recycled vessel will head towards a giant rubbish tip about 1,600km offshore – known as the eastern pacific garbage patch or trash vortex that is about twice the size of Texas – where a growing mass of marine litter has been brought together by swirling currents.

The team of ecological adventurers, which aims to sail through this confluence of waste, is led by a British billionaire, David de Rothschild, who, despite some gentle ribbing from his supporters, hopes that after three years of planning his painstaking efforts will force global politicians to act.

“All my friends are like ‘will you hurry up and build a boat?’ But not a lot of people build a boat out of recycled plastic,” Mr de Rothschild recently told reporters in the United States. “That’s been the challenge. We were talking about a problem and not moving it towards a solution. I hope it becomes a tipping point.”

Although no specific departure date has yet been fixed, the Plastiki will receive an enthusiastic welcome when it eventually reaches Australia, which is in the middle of National Recycling Week, organised by Planet Ark, a non-profit organistaion.

“It is pretty frightening that there is this soup of plastic floating around in the Pacific. It is probably at a point where we can’t do anything physically about it, you can’t trawl the seas to take the plastic out because so much of it is so small and about 50 per cent of it is on the ocean floor rather than floating on the top,” explained Brad Gray, the campaign manager at Planet Ark.

“There’s research that shows that some parts of the Pacific you can pull out more plastic than you can plankton, which is a shocking state of affairs.”

The Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum that represents 21 Pacific Rim countries has investigated the impact this type of waste has had on the ocean.

Professor Alistair McIlgorm, from Australia’s National Marine Science Centre, was commissioned by Apec to look at the costs of curbing the pollution.

“It’s not just observable plastic that is the problem. Plastic breaks down to little slivers, which then further break down to the microscopic level and can be ingested by marine life and ultimately may be ingested by people. It is really good to see this being highlighted [by Mr de Rothschild],” said Mr McIlgorm.

Ninety per cent of ocean debris is domestic or industrial plastic. Scientists have said confidently that much of it could have been be trapped in giant filters before it reached the ocean but once it escaped into vast expanses offshore, the clean-up costs would be exorbitant.

“The criminal part here is once we actually introduce man-made waste into the oceans it doesn’t disintegrate, it starts to build up and after that it is expensive for us to get it back to being pristine,” Mr McIlgorm said.

The attempt by the crew of the Plastiki to highlight the threats facing the world’s largest ocean have been inspired by the legendary endeavours of Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian explorer who captained a small balsawood raft, the Kon-Tiki, from Peru to French Polynesia in 1947 to show that ancient South American tribes could have populated remote parts of the South Pacific.

Veterans of trans-Pacific sailings have said Mr de Rothschild’s crew should be prepared for moments of both bliss and disappointment during their mammoth crossing.

“It is a beautiful feeling. It’s one of the few things you can do these days where you can be totally free but what is amazing is that you can be literally a thousand miles from anywhere, it will all be serene and you’ll look over to see a soft drink bottle float past. It brings you back to earth with a thud. It is a mess out there and there’s no doubt that it is getting worse,” said Rod Waterhouse, a sailor from Sydney who has completed the nine-month journey across the mighty Pacific on four occasions since 1982.

In a final act of environmental symbolism, the Plastiki will itself be recycled at the end of its epic trip in Australia.



foreign.desk@thenational.ae