Crazy
I’m thinking about building a boat. A plastic boat. A boat made out of plastic bottles, styrofoam scraps and other discarded pieces of plastic flotsam that I am finding. I’ve gone online, looked at the examples that others have made. I’ve written Marcus Eriksen – who has made a few of them himself – and gotten some good advice. I get it… I think I could do this.
Is it a crazy idea? I guess that depends on your definition of crazy. I mean, when the first guy said, “Let’s build a rocket and go to the moon,” what did the other guy think? Crazy has a way of making sense eventually.
I do know some things that are crazy. One billion dollars worth of plastic goes into our landfills every year. That’s crazy. Ninety percent of all waste in the ocean is plastic. Other than what has been incinerated, every plastic item that has ever been manufactured is still out there, somewhere. (It’s not like putting it in a landfill changes anything. It will still be there 10,000 years from now). You can’t throw it away when there is no “away.”
These are crazy truths.
Maybe taking a small amount of this stuff and using it to construct a boat or a raft isn’t really all that crazy. What if getting the word out was as simple as sailing this plastic vessel from one end of Puget Sound to the other, engaging people along the way and having a discussion about what is really important, about what “forever” really means.
I’m thinking about building a boat… but then I’m always thinking about building a boat.
About Ken Campbell
New Release
A story of sea kayaking and science on the rugged coast of Alaska. Coming – Spring 2014.
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