Sailing the Pacific on a Plastic Boat

David and his crew—Jo Royle, David Thomson, Olav Heyerdahl and filmmakers Vern Moen and Max Jourdan—hope their journey makes people realize how garbage is threatening the health of the planet and its inhabitants.

"Every year, hundreds of thousands of marine mammals are needlessly ingesting plastic, little flecks of plastic. That's blocking their system and causing most of the fatalities," David says. "Those little flecks are also being ingested into the fish that we are then consuming. So there's a toxic transfer going on from plastic into fish into us, if we consume fish."

As evidenced by the creation of the Plastiki, David says plastic and other waste doesn't have to end up in a landfill. "Around plastics, we need to reduce, reuse, recycle and the fourth R—refuse the single-use plastics," he says. "I hope that the Plastiki showcases that we've used innovative materials, ... new glues that we've actually engineered out of cashew nuts and sugar, which show that there are solutions to those problems out there. We can all do something about it."

Exclusive videos and photos from the Plastiki crew