IN ITS QUEST TO HAVE ALL REFUSE RECYCLED BY 2020, the city of San Francisco in 2007 was the first in the U.S. to ban supermarkets and drugstores from sending groceries and essentials home in plastic bags.
To raise awareness about global plastic pollution, a team of boat builders and environmentalists at Pier 31 in the City are constructing an ocean-going catamaran out of soda bottles and other post-consumer plastic.
The 60-foot boat is called Plastiki after the 1947 primitive raft Kon-Tiki, sailed from Peru on the Pacific by Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl and a crew of five. Their adventure ended 101 days and 4,300 miles later wrecked on a reef off the Tuamoto Islands. Heyerdahl told their tale in “Kon-Tiki,” which was in Miss Jo’s family library growing up and grabbed her sea-faring imagination.
With any luck, when Plastiki sails this fall for Australia 11,000 miles away, it won’t get caught in one of the five massive swirls of mostly plastic garbage trapped in the Pacific Ocean.
Here’s a video about Plastiki: