Lamutiki
Anyone remembers David Mayer de Rothschild’s Plastiki, “a 60 feet (18 m) catamaran made out of 12,500 reclaimed plastic bottles and other recycled PET plastic and waste products” that successfully conquered the Pacific Ocean last year?
Well, it seems this young man from Lamu (Kenya) had a similar idea and is in the process of building his own plastic bottle boat. Our reader Arthur Buliva from Kenya just sent us these pictures with the following explanation:
I was in Lamu recently and came across this man who was making a boat out of plastic bottles and old slippers. He was not yet finished with it yet but I took the few photos of the product that I could.
He says that he collects plastic water bottles that the tourists throw on the beach. He also wakes up early in the morning to collect bottles washed ashore from the sea. With these he has constructed the (in his own words, “first in its kind”) boat.
He water-proofs it by sealing the gaps with used slippers collected in the very same way. Then boils tar in order to glue the components all together.
Kenya believe it? 
(all images kindly shared by Arthur Buliva under a CC-SA licence – thx!)
28 January 2011 - 7:32 am - :
It is very ingenious, but would you ride on a boat not made out of an homogeneous tree or industrially built? I wouldn’t…although I applause the creativity and spirit of initiative, it is only cute when you build things that your life doesn’t depend on.
I remember growing up in Senegal we used to play with old tires, build small cars and trucks with recycled cans or recycled plastic bottles.
I think it is in our DNA to create something out of nothing in Africa and as well in America.
Thanks