By: Trish Smith

For your long-anticipated summer vacation, wouldn’t you like to use all of those plastic water bottles that you’ve been sticking in the recycling bin to make a fully functioning boat? And what about adding some brand new HP notebooks, smart phones and hard drives onto that boat while you’re being propelled by both the sun and the cool morning wind? Maybe that sounds like wishful thinking, but that’s pretty close to what British eco-enthusiast David de Rothschild is already doing.

As a way to bring attention to the growing amount of plastic trash that’s circulating in our ocean and killing marine life, Rothschild built what he calls Plastiki. Plastiki is a 60-foot solar and hydro-powered boat made from fiberglass and plastic that’s found in food and beverage containers. The boat is proof that plastic can be recycled into something amazing.

Rothschild wants to use the recycled plastic boat to sail across the Pacific. Using the cool gadgets from HP, he will document not only the amount of plastic that he collects, but also the heart rates of his crewmembers as they get acquainted with surrounding sharks. Now this sounds like an eco-friendly and action-packed summer vacation to me!

Learn more about Rothschild and his Sundance Channel program, Eco Trip: The Real Cost of Living.

If you can believe it, this isn’t the first time that a recycled plastic boat has been built. In 2008 Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Joel Paschal created a raft made out of 15,000 plastic bottles and the top of an old airplane.

Rothschild has a truly amazing eco invention, and I hope that its design and journey are a success. If they are, Rothschild’s dream of turning old plastic bottles into new and reinforced boats will come true, and the future of unused plastic could be much brighter.

Source: Greentech Media

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