Tag Archive for 'Plastiki'

Adventure Inspiration

mathew published on December 14, 2010 in celebrity, technology, transportation and zeitgeist. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

Hey SuperForest!

I was drawn to National Geographic today, and found the Adventures of the Year 2010! Are you in need of inspiration? Then head over to National Geographic and read up on these stories. Our good friend David de Rothschild, creator of the Plastiki, is on the list as well! So, be sure to check his story out, and all of the others’ stories, including SuperForest favourite Jessica Watson. I will include my favourite story below to whet your appetite. I should also mention that each story also has an interview with each of the candidates. Go get inspired!

The Explorer

By walking the Amazon from source to sea, Ed Stafford completed one of the last epic, undone adventures.

A river greater in length and volume than any in the world, and no one had hiked along its entirety. A jungle the size of a continent, and no one had managed to cross all of it on foot. When Ed Stafford found out (after some Googling) that the Amazon had never been walked, he decided he was the one to do it. And he did. Stafford trekked more than 4,000 miles through the Amazon—surviving hostile locals, venomous snakes, and huge distances without food resupplies—for nearly two and a half years (860 days). The latter part of the expedition was with a Peruvian forestry worker, Gadiel “Cho” Sanchez Rivera, who accompanied Stafford from his home town in Peru all the way the Atlantic Ocean, arriving on August 9, 2010. It was the first time Cho had ever seen the ocean. It was the first time anyone had walked the entire length of the Amazon River.
—By Ryan Bradley

IN MY OWN WORDS

By Ed Stafford

A Partnership Forms
I was going through an area of Peru called the Red Zone, which is notorious for drug trafficking and terrorism. Cho was a forestry worker, and he’d been out of work for a few weeks. He knew that area and told me: “I’ll walk with you through there.” It wasn’t just dangerous—it was bloody terrifying. Everyone we met said we were going to get killed—even the Peruvian police force can’t enter this lawless zone. But Cho really enjoyed those five days and said, “Well, I’ll walk with you to the next town if you like, Ed.” And at the next town he told me, “Well, if you can get me a passport, I’ll come with you through the southern tip of Colombia and into Brazil.” Cho, in fact, never went home and ended up accompanying me for the remaining two years.

Staying Connected
My main sponsor was hit by the financial crisis and couldn’t continue funding me after a year and a half. It was only through an online plea for funds we were able to keep going. An individual from Hong Kong gave nearly $10,000; some school kids in America even donated their pocket money. It was quite humbling. The mobile Internet unit I carried enabled me to broadcast the expedition live, uploading videos and blogs. The Internet created this expedition, and it also ended up saving it.


Pointed Encounters
Some of the Amerindian communities in Peru are quite closed off, and there are a lot of myths about outsiders. They believe in this pela cara [“face peeler”] that comes in and kills villagers and takes their body parts. Unfortunately, this pela cara looks a lot like a gringo, and convincing people I wasn’t a human body part trafficker was quite tricky and draining. A few times we got held at gunpoint and arrow-point. As a result of the atrocities inflicted in the ’80s and ’90s, a lot of people were angry or scared when they saw us. Many indigenous communities live in a permanent state of defensive alertness.


Broke but Happy
We ran out of food quite a few times, our GPS broke, and as we had no money, our insurance lapsed. I think this section when we were really remote and everything was going wrong for us ended up being the highlight of the trip. It was just Cho and me in the jungle having to use our wits and experience to survive. We were so remote and far from the river that if anything had gone wrong that needed immediate medical attention. we would have died. That was the bottom line. As the Brazilians would not let us use their detailed military maps, and the GPS had broken, we ended up navigating using a compass and a 1:4 million map of the entire Amazon Basin!


Smoked Tortoise
We fished each night, often the easiest fish to catch were piranhas. Once, when we ran our of wire “leaders”, we had to daisy-chain sewing needles together to stop the piranhas biting the hook off the line. On another occasion when we were completely out of food, we found a red footed tortoise and we were so starving that we killed it, then salted and smoked it over the fire. This was our only food for the next few days. Cho justified it as a gift from God.


The Good Life
In the middle of the rain forest we slept in very comfortable hammock systems with big mosquito nets. Sure, we were going through swamps and flooded forests with mosquitoes and biting ants, but we loved our time in the jungle. There were no stresses like in the towns. It was a simple life. People pick up on the fact that I had a bot fly living in my head or the skin disease leishmaniasis, but these were trivial really; the jungle’s not as bad as everyone makes out. It was an almost idyllic life at times.


A Partnership, Continued
The level of trust built up between Cho and me was absolutely undisputed. He’s just been granted his English visa, and he’s planning to visit the UK to learn English and play rugby. I owe him a huge amount and it’ll be lovely to have him here, pay him back, broaden his horizons a bit.

An Honest Agenda
Having schools follow the journey and learn about the rainforest was a fantastic bonus but I have to admit, deep down, the primal drive that kept me going was really the desire to be the first person to walk the river. World firsts are quite hard to come by these days.

(Via.)

The SuperForest Sundae

april published on August 7, 2010 in celebrity and zeitgeist. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .

Today’s SuperForest Sundae celebrates the completion of the Plastiki’s voyage from San Fran to Sydney, the power and healing of Restorative Justice, and Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s uplifting video in which she gathers strangers and enlists them to make stuff together.

Plastiki voyage = success!
Back in March, we told you about the incredible Plastiki voyage that had recently set sail. [In case you missed it: Armed with a crazy idea - undoubtedly harder to execute than it sounds - the Plastiki crew fashioned themselves a catamaran using 12,500 plastic bottles and sailed it from San Francisco to Sydney]. Well, I’m happy to say they made it! Their heroic journey across the Pacific lasted 129 days. See the illustration below for a visual and numeric breakdown of the trip.

Brit David de Rothschild came up with idea as a way to get people to see waste, not as waste, but as a resource. Check out the video below of David onboard the Plastiki, talking about his hopes for a new way of looking at plastic.

I’d say all it takes to really change your thought pattern on this one is to pause before you pull out your purse. Look at what you’re buying has been packaged in. Bring your own cup, container, bag or box, and offer a polite and cheery “No, thanks” to unnecessary waste. Oh, if you’d like to pledge (or simply re-affirm) your allegiance to this cause, you can do so here, where every click means you’re committed!

A path to healing

As a young girl, I remember being completely stunned when I’d learned that Pope John Paul II had visited his would-be killer in jail, two years after the assassination attempt. I thought it was a remarkable display of forgiveness and mused on this for a long time afterward. This flashback came to me after I’d read about Restorative Justice programs in the UK, which sees victims and their offenders meet face to face for a chat.

Peter Woolf was a prolific offender, ensconced in a world of violence and depravity, who, by his own reckoning committed about 20,000 crimes. Then he burgled a house, fought with his victim and ended up in prison yet again. This time though it was different. Peter met with his victim, Will, in a restorative justice session that took place in the prison. The meeting changed both their lives for ever.

Will’s experience of meeting the person who attacked him meant he could move on from the trauma. Why Me? was started in 2008 as a way to deliver Restorative Justice to victims who want it.

The Beckoning of Lovely
You might recall catching Amy Krouse Rosenthal‘s Thought Bubble On Kindness on SuperForest recently. In this video, we see her put a call out to strangers, inviting them to meet her at the Bean sculpture in Chicago on 08/08/08 to make pretty things, friends, energetic entrances and more. This one’s the cherry on this week’s sundae.

Oh, and to see what Amy did one year after The Beckoning of Lovely, click here.

Happy Sunday.
April

Jo Royle, Plastiki Skipper, on CNN Op Ed!

mathew published on May 1, 2010 in art, build, celebrity, technology, transportation and zeitgeist. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Gooooddd Morninggg SuperForest!

I know you all have heard of the Plastiki!  That awesome plastic ship that is travelling across the Pacific Ocean!  We have written about them before! Here & Here, check those out!  Well Jo Royle, the Plastiki skipper, had a piece published on CNN, and it is awesome!  I wanted to share it with you all today.  Here is my favourite section:

A week later we were exploring the south side of the island, the leeward facing shores of the notorious hostile Southern Ocean. Next stop the Antarctic continent, a land that no nation has claim over and no human can permanently inhabit.

Exploring the remote shoreline I was faced with a staggering accumulation of marine debris, and it broke my heart. How could we as intelligent human beings have such a far reaching impact on a land that didn’t even feel like it belonged to the human race? A land that only a handful had ever stepped foot on.

This experience fundamentally changed my life. I had spent years sailing, and the oceans had taught me how to live resourcefully and sustainably. Now I wanted to give something back to nature. From that moment on the focus of my work shifted, I wanted to discover why we had allowed our environment to be so damaged by our greed and laziness.

Through various sailing expeditions this change of tack has taken me on a new journey, from working with NGOs, such as Friends of the Earth and Earthwatch, to helping my sponsor, Pindar designing and implementing a quantifiable five year environmental strategy. I have since also undertaken an MSc in Environmental Science and Society, and now find myself the skipper of the Plastiki.

The article is awesome, and if you haven’t been keeping up with the Plastiki adventure GO HERE for updates and news and fun galore!

GO READ JO’S ARTICLE!!!!

Love to all you awesome SuperForesters! Have a great Saturday,

Mathew

Message in 12,500 Plastic Bottles

heather published on March 10, 2010 in art, build, celebrity, technology, transportation and zeitgeist. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

plastiki-poster

Good Evening Superforest!

Here on Superforest we’ve brought you some epic tales of our dear old pal, plastic. We’ve talked about replacing single use plastics with greener alternatives, given you the staggering facts on bottled water and suggested trying to see plastic through a different lens, as it is all around us already. I think the general consensus that we’ve reached thus far is that some plastic can be useful, some innovative, and some extremely harmful to our environment. The good and evil of plastic, if you will. To add to our ongoing analysis of all that is plastic, I give you The Plastiki: a boat made from 12,500 plastic bottles!

plastiki-boat

This boat was the brainchild of David de Rothschild and his team at Adventure Ecology. David is a British eco-adventurer who seems to be a bit of a green celebrity and a man of science and innovation with the audacity to follow his passions. The Bear Grylls of environmental activism, perhaps? With his devilishly handsome looks and passion for environmental issues, David has conducted many adventures, expeditions and projects to spread the message of working together for a healthier planet.  His latest adventure is The Plastiki: a boat made almost entirely out of plastic that is meant to sail from San Francisco to Sydney in an attempt to prove that we can start to rethink waste and start seeing it as a resource. The mission is also to spread awareness about the number of plastic bottles that do get discarded, and how they affect our health, our water and our environment.

david-de-rothschild

Some facts about the Plastiki:

  • it is made almost entirely of 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles
  • it is bonded partially with an all natural glue made from cashew nuts and sugar cane
  • it will function entirely off the grid
  • it has a hydroponic vertical garden on board

The Plastiki adventure hasn’t begun yet, but you will be able to track the voyage online. I encourage you to explore Adventure Ecology’s website, it is very inspiring, artistic and very Superforesty, I might add!

Learning about this adventure got me thinking: what can we as Superforesters do in our own environment to help reduce waste from plastic water bottles, or other types of plastic? Some of this is probably not new to you, but I thought I’d create a quick list:

  • Get your own reusable, stainless steel water bottle or thermos. I use a thermos so I can use it for hot or cold beverages, but having one for hot, one for cold is always great too!
  • Bring a mug from home to work to refill your water throughout the day. This also gives you a chance to express yourself in your workplace through your choice of mug.
  • Hold a screening of a relevant film that discusses plastic, plastic water bottles, bottled water, the eastern garbage patch, or any other relevant issue regarding plastic waste in our world.
  • Create art installations or functional projects of your own to make a statement about single use plastics, while also reusing them!
  • Clean up your environment. Perfect example: Superforester April’s contribution to cleaning up Australia!

In a related story, this morning while I was out walking, I saw a guy toting a case of apple juices, perhaps for a work meeting or event, and I thought to myself: “Wow! Look at all that useless packaging!” Each juice individually contained in its own bottle, then set in cardboard and wrapped in more plastic to hold the case together. So much waste, when really all he needed to do was buy one large bottle of juice, and ask each person to bring a mug from home.

retro-coffee-mug

There is so much to say on this topic, so let’s keep the discussion going! One thing that is clear to me is that we all have the power to vote with our dollars every time we make a purchase. We can reduce how many single use plastics or items with excessive packaging are consumed. Think before you buy! The Plastiki is just another amazing use of plastic that will bring more light on the importance of healing our environment. Bravo to Mr. de Rothschild and his crew — I hope they have a successful voyage!