This could be a follow-up to my post about waste surveillance. Is the future really behind us? Bad joke, sorry. Seriously, though, the Plastiki project is an attempt to use some VERY low-tech recycling to make a boat:

David de Rothschild’s plan to sail across the Pacific Ocean, from San Francisco to Sydney in a 60-foot catamaran made of used two-liter plastic bottles, isn’t just an adventure. It’s a crusade. “Our philosophy of throwing everything away has to change,” says de Rothschild. “I want to use the Plastiki as a platform to help people think of waste as a resource.”

Rather than develop or innovate new ways of converting waste, however, the Plastiki seems like mostly an aesthetic and marketing-oriented project. It’s reality show drama more than real discovery or a leap in science and engineering, but nonetheless it carries a good message.