David de Rothschild... A British adventurer, ecologist and
environmentalist... Built this amazing 60 foot catamaran from
12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles on Pier 31 in
San Fransisco using a unique recycling technique called
'Seretex' which was developed by de Rothschild and
his team to reuse PET in a novel way...Finding
new uses for a waste product.
In doing this he developed a new form of sustainable
ship. He also raised new awareness of the
Pacific Garbage Patch... His overall goal of
the Plastiki project was to bring awareness to
environmental issues, in this case plastic pollution.
He posed the question... Is plastic the problem...
Or dumb uses of the material... Do we need
to re-define the stories we tell ourselves about
the value of the material moving it away from
valueless to valuable... That in time
influences how we use and re-use it.
As a teenager, David was a top ranking horse jumper.
He pursued education at Harrow then Oxford Brooks...
Studied at London Naturopathy College then started
his own music merchandising business.
He bought 1100 acres of land on Banks Peninsular, New Zealand...
He joined a Polar Expedition, travelling across Antarctica,
setting a speed record crossing the Greenland ice cap
and reached the North Pole with
hungry polar bears following him.
It was after all this that he turned into an enterprising
eco-adventurer... and was ready for his next adventure...
The Plastiki... And sailing 17,306km (or 8,000 nautical miles)
from San Francisco to Sydney.
The crew said they felt like Mark Twain.
David continues his passions with his
'Sculpt The Future Foundation'
a charity that supports 'Innovations and
Creativity in Social and Environmental Impact Efforts'...
'Adventure Ecology Organisation'...
And 'Taking It Global'.
The 'Articulate Series', a project in the
Amazon rainforest is very interesting.
I came across David de Rothschild when I was
researching for my blog post about garbage...
I hope you find reading about him as
interesting and challenging as I did.
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