Plastiki - PEP Water Bottle Ship and Voyage
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| Audience/Grade: | College Freshman-Continuing Education |
| Discipline(s): |
Chemical, Biochemical, Biomolecular Engineering Design Engineering Ethics Environmental Engineering General Engineering, Engineering Science Industrial Design Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering Ocean Engineering |
| Special Topic(s): | |
| Learning Resource Type: |
Community - General |
| Media Type: |
Unknown |
| Author(s): |
Organization:The Plastiki |
| Description: | Website created for the Plastiki voyage by the adventurer and environmentalist David de Rothschild and a handpicked crew of leading scientists, adventurers and creatives set sail over 10,000 nautical miles across the Pacific from San Francisco to Sydney on a 60-foot catamaran made from post consumer plastic water and soda bottles. The mission: to rethink waste as resource and to bring attention to global warming and rising oceans in the pacific. "The Plastiki was nothing if not ambitious. We wanted bicycles that would generate electricity, a hydroponic garden, water stills, vacuum de-salinators, a composting toilet, solar panels, wind turbines, regenerative electric propulsion, satellite communications and pretty much anything else that constituted an innovative sustainable “system”. She was to be a floating showroom of non-emitting futurist ideas that were simple, elegant and wholly attainable. Our concept architect, Michael Pawlyn, had set us firmly on this road, seeding a whole range of ideas in his iconic white pen on brown paper sketches. Like so many other things with this boat all we had to do now was figure out how to make them and ergonomically integrate them into the structure. Hand in hand with the systems ran the cabin. The jewel in the Plastiki crown; suspended in mid air between the two hulls and typically referred to as “the pod”. For the design of the cabin we turned to Architecture for Humanity and Nathaniel Corum. The brief ran a little like this: a replicable structure that can be dismounted and “re-used” in a disaster situation in order to provide timely shelter. One idea was that the cabin panels could be made from recycled plastic and fashioned with a commonality in mind that would allow them to be re-assembled into a geodesic self supporting structure no matter where they might be found in the world. A kind of relief Lego utilising ubiquitous world wide waste. The design morphed wonderfully from egg into angular triangular stealth dome. Dimensions were carefully pushed and pulled to accommodate heads and shoulders, feet and toes. Consideration was given to water catchment, port holes, ventilation, solar panels and all kinds of other life enhancing additions. It was like the Ferrari with all the extras." |
| Rating: |
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| Related Resources | |
| Keywords: | Plastiki environmental activism catamaran PET water bottles PET water bottles |
| Has Components: |
Plastiki Twitter Plastiki Virtual Tour |
| Referenced By: |
CNN Video on Plastiki Plastiki Arrives in Sydney Plastic Bottle Catamaran Completes Epic Pacific Crossing |
| Usage Tip | |
| Related ABET Criteria: |
(b) Design and conduct experiments, analyze and interpret data (c) Design a system, component, or process (h) Understand global, economic, environmental, and societal context |
| Use of Resource: |
Interesting case study of environmental activism or reuse. |
| Difficulty: |
Easy |
| Interactivity Level: |
Medium |
| Version Info | |
| Publication Date: | July 2010 |
| Platform/Format: |
WWW |
| Cost: |
Free |
| Download URL: | http://www.theplastiki.com/ |
| Metadata: |
IEEE LOM Record |
| Collection: |
NEEDS
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