David de Rothschild is a rising young star in the realm of ecological awareness. At the age of 25, he founded Adventure Ecology, an organization dedicated to promoting awareness of our rapidly changing global environment. For his latest event, he plans on sailing to a region in the Pacific known variously as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the Pacific Trash Vortex, to document the gigantic amount of trash found there (estimated at twice the size of Texas!) and spread the message of sustainability.
His ship, which is currently undergoing construction at Pier 31 in San Francisco, is composed entirely from recycled material, including 12,000 plastic bottles. It’s called the Plastiki, archly named in honor of the Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl’s famous ship. Originally planned to begin its voyage on the anniversary of Heyerdahl’s journey, the actual date has yet to be determined.
It cannot be stressed enough how important our endangered ecology is. The Garbage Patch is killing off a great number of seafaring animals, who frequently mistake its plastic bits for food. This is by no means an isolated incident, and it may already be too late to make the large global-scale change necessary to reverse the trend. But if we can get our kids thinking about the world as their home, rather than just their neighborhood, then we can at least avoid making further mistakes down the line. After all, this is the world they are inheriting from us, and they’ll need to know how to take care of it so it doesn’t get worse.
