David de Rothschild Discusses His Upcoming Plastiki Voyage
For those who say that plastic is evil or plastic represents the devil then those proactive types can do one of two things – 1) educate people about why not to use, buy or sell plastic goods (a tough assignment) or 2) use the plastic that we have for some other useful purpose. Plastic is everywhere but as much as we would like to wave a wand a make it disappear, the fact is that the “devils material” it is going to be here for a while so let’s with it.
David de Rothschild seeks to change the perception of plastic. He has created a plastic love boat named the Plastiki which he discussed in depth in a presentation/lecture a couple nights ago at San Francisco’s Academy of Sciences. De Rothschild plans to sail his boat, made almost entirely from reused plastic bottles, from Pier 31 in San Francisco, through the Great Eastern Garbage Patch to Sydney, Australia.
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De Rothschild’s presentation came off as anything but dull and preachy. What else can we say when he begins the lecture with a video of many bovine tailpipes creating various amounts of various colored excrement. Rothschild’s point being not to gross the audience out (which he did to some degree) but to educate people that all the cow “tailpipes” create more CO2 than the tailpipes for all cars and trucks.
The casually attired, highly educated and hyper frenzied De Rothschild never wasted a moment or a word as he pointed out various that fact that there are 300 terms for “sustainability” and that his project and much of his thinking attributes to Buckminster Fuller. De Rothschild takes Fullers words, “Do more with less” to heart and thus the creation of the boat made from the plastic bottles.
De Rothschild, admittedly could have spoken for hours, mostly seeks to educate the world that people should find value in the omnipresent plastic - even if it means pulling a Kon-Tiki or Waterworld to get his point across.
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David de Rothschild is quite right to draw attention to the problem of tha appalling amount of plastic waste in the oceans.
However, much of this is due to the type of plastic the plastic waste patches consist of. Virtually of them are formed from conventional plastic which, as we all know, lies around for hundreds of years. Some of them might consist of a few kilos of degradable plastic, but even these would only be degradable up to a point.
(Many of the popular degradable plastics fragment rather than degrade completely. This means they can still lie around in the ocean and pose a danger to marine life if ingested).
The solution surely lies in a ’self-destructing’ plastic known as oxo-biodegradable. Oxo-bio plastic is still a fairly novel concept compared with other forms of degradable plastic currently in use. However, it is becoming increasingly popular, especially in developing countries with a growing plastic waste problem which not only pollutes the land, but also clogs up their rivers and water courses.
Among other things, oxo-bio plastic it has the following main benefits. First, it is completely degradable, so that when it does degrade, it does so without leaving any traces.
Secondly, it is a short-life plastic. If you are wondering how short a life it has, the answer is that it’s up to you!
You can “tell” when to degrade by programming it with a pre-set lifespan during manufacture, currently the only form of plastic which can.
(You can make it degrade in as little as six months onwards for environmentally sensitive areas, though in most cases, as with plastic shopping bags, this would not be very practical for the consumer).
Thirdly, it actually behaves quite well during its brief existence. Because it disappears completely after degrading, it leaves no harmful residues to be ingested by wildlife, unlike some other plastic degradables. Mercifully, it is also free of methane emissions, even when buried in a landfill. You can also recycle it and remake the recyclate back into oxo-bio plastic.
Professor Gerald Scott, a leading European expert in plastics technology, recently stated that if the plastic floating around in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch had been made of oxo-biodegradable plastic, most of it would all have degraded by now. So, no plastic, no patch!
UNEP (United Nations Environmental Programme) has recently called for a worldwide ban on all plastic bags. It’s an tempting idea, but it would probably never work. Plastic bags are (regrettably) too useful to give up completely and people would always find a way round the ban by using other forms of plastic.
Of course we must all try to cut down on our use of plastic, but why can’t environmental bodies such as UNEP encourage people to switch to oxo-biodegradable plastic instead?
David De Rothschild- Exposed!!!! Global Warming HOAX!!! Liar, taking your money for carbon tax!!!!! NWO falls on your feet
[...] to Clean Pacific Garbage Patch Boat Made of 16,000 Plastic Bottles to Sail from Cali to Australia David de Rothschild Discusses His Upcoming Plastiki Voyage Journey to the Center of Floating Junk [...]
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