The launch of a Kenyan community-built boat known as the Flipflopi – the first in the world to be made entirely from recycled marine plastic and flip-flops – is being supported with … read morea new, six-minute film created by award-winning advertising agency, Droga5 London & Borderland. The film documents the journey from Kenya’s plastics ban to the creation of the Flipflopi boat, which is launching into the Indian Ocean on 15 September 2018. The nine-metre sailing dhow has been created from over 10 tonnes of collected plastic waste. With no precedents to learn from, the Flipflopi project team, led by inspirational Lamu-based boat builder Ali Skanda, has had to develop pioneering techniques at every stage in order to craft the various components of the boat. Limiting themselves to only locally available technology and materials, they have collected discarded plastic, shredded it into small pieces, then heated it and remoulded it. The resulting plastic parts have been carved by Ali and his team of traditional dhow boat builders exactly as they would do when working with wood. The Flipflopi Project is calling for a #Plasticrevolution; its ambition is for a world without single use plastic. To achieve this it is working to raise awareness of the danger of the single use culture that leads to so much plastic: more than 12 million tonnes a year being dumped at sea rather than being repurposed or recycled. Once sea trials have been completed the Flipflopi will be embarking on a ground breaking 500km expedition from Lamu to Zanzibar in Tanzania. Departing early 2019, the team will be visiting schools, communities and government officials, sharing solutions and changing mindsets along the way.
read less...
