This summer British explorer and environmentalist David de Rothschild will set sail with a crew of scientists from San Francisco to Sydney, covering approximately 12,000 nautical miles. His boat, Plastiki, is a high tech 60 foot research catamaran made from reused plastic bottles and recycled plastics.

Plastiki hosts solar panels and turbines to power it’s electrical needs. There is a hand operated water desalination system to supply fresh water and it uses a nitrogen-extracting waste system that composts waste and kitchen scraps into fertilizer for deposit at ports.

The goal of this expedition is to raise awareness of our ocean’s unsolicited challenge of accommodating our plastic waste, which by some estimates creates an island of debris as large as 600,000 square miles!

The boat is being built at Pier 31 in San Francisco and is scheduled to set sail this August.