Remember the Plastiki - that 60-foot catamaran with hulls made of a rigid plastic structure and filled with about 12,000 empty plastic bottles?  It set sail last week from San Francisco to Sydney on an 11,000-nautical mile journey that will go past the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and attempt to “hightlight the dangers of living in a throwaway world,” and to spread awareness about pollution in the oceans.

Environmentalist and banking heir David De Rothschild, a 31-year-old adventurer who has completed expeditions to both pole, is out on the sea for three months with a crew and skipper Jo Royle.  And they're not messing around.  The 12,000 used water bottles are filled with carbon dioxide to make the vessel durable and buoyant, the catamaran is powered by solar, wind and sea turbines, and an exercise bike will power the boat's laptops - there is also a composting bathroom and gardens to grow food.

It's been fun to follow Plastiki's progress thus far, and we intend to stick with them the entire way.  Visit their fun website for more information and ways to track their progress, and we recommend following their tweets as well. 

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