A junk raft is a type of home-built watercraft made of

plastic bottle A plastic bottle is a bottle constructed from high-density or low density plastic. Plastic bottles are typically used to store liquids such as water, soft drinks, motor oil, cooking oil, medicine, shampoo or milk. They range in sizes, from very ...

s or other recycled materials constructed by artists and community-minded groups organizing recreational flotillas, or by environmentally concerned individuals seeking to draw attention to the problem of floating debris and the need for recycling. It can also be an improvised small, functional watercraft from readily available materials.

The JUNK Raft Project was organized by Dr. Marcus Eriksen, Joel Paschal and Anna Cummins in

Long Beach, California Long Beach is a coastal city in southeastern Los Angeles County, California, United States. It is the list of United States cities by population, 44th-most populous city in the United States, with a population of 451,307 as of 2022. A charter ci ...

in 2008, to bring attention to the issue of

plastic pollution Plastic pollution is the accumulation of plastic objects and particles (e.g. plastic bottles, bags and microbeads) in the Earth's environment that adversely affects humans, wildlife and their habitat. Plastics that act as pollutants are catego ...

in the

Great Pacific Garbage Patch The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (also Pacific trash vortex and North Pacific Garbage Patch) is a garbage patch, a gyre of marine debris particles, in the central North Pacific Ocean. It is located roughly from 135°W to 155°W and 35°N ...

. The project was launched with the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, after founder Charles J. Moore encountered the patch in 1997.Donovan Hohn (June 22, 2008), "Sea of Trash", ''New York Times''
/ref> Organizers hoped to "creatively raise awareness about plastic debris and pollution in the ocean," specifically the Great Pacific Garbage Patch trapped in the

North Pacific Gyre The North Pacific Gyre (NPG) or North Pacific Subtropical Gyre (NPSG), located in the northern Pacific Ocean, is one of the five major oceanic gyres. This gyre covers most of the northern Pacific Ocean. It is the largest ecosystem on Earth, loca ...

, by sailing 2,600 miles across the

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

on a raft made from an old

Cessna 310 The Cessna 310 is an American four-to-six-seat, low-wing, twin-engine monoplane produced by Cessna between 1954 and 1980. It was the second twin-engine aircraft that Cessna put into production; the first was the Cessna T-50. It was used by the ...

aircraft fuselage and six pontoons filled with 15,000 old plastic bottles. Crewed by Dr. Marcus Eriksen of the Foundation and film-maker Joel Paschal, the raft set off from

on 1 June 2008, arriving in

Honolulu, Hawaii Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...

on 28 August 2008. On the way, they gave valuable water to record-holding ocean rower

Roz Savage Rosalind Elizabeth Adriana Savage (born 23 December 1967), known as Roz Savage, is an English ocean rower, environmental advocate, writer, speaker and politician. She was elected as a Liberal Democrat MP for the new South Cotswolds constituen ...

, also on an environmental awareness voyage, when her supplies dwindled. The construction of the JUNK Raft began in April 2008 and was finished the following month. The huge undertaking of constructing a seaworthy raft from "junk" was aided by volunteers from the environmental education programs of Bell Elementary School, Green Ambassadors, Muse Elementary School, Santa Monica High School, and Westbridge School for Girls. The volunteers lent a hand by cleaning bottles, fastening bottle caps, and stuffing them into the recycled fisherman's net pontoon forms.

References

{{Reflist Rafts Plastic recycling

See also

References