Earlier this week, some lucky San Franciscans got to witness to a historic event - The test sail of Plastiki, a 60-ft. Catamaran, built almost entirely out of plastic bottles and other plastic waste.

Plastiki's twin hulls are constructed from 12,500 recycled soft drink and water bottles, that have been filled with dry ice. To ensure that the entire boat can be recycled once the trip is complete, a 'glue' made from cashewnuts and sugar was used to stick the bottles to each other. Except for a few items, the rest of the ship is built using a hard plastic called PET (the same material bottles are made of).

The project that has been in the works since last winter, is the brainchild of 30-year old David de Rothschild, founder of Adventure Ecology, a non-profit educational foundation. David picked plastic as the medium, in order to highlight one of our biggest pollution problems. Plastic not only takes a lot of energy to manufacture, but also, requires hundreds of years to disintegrate.

According to the National Academy of Sciences, over 5 million tons of plastic enters our oceans each year. While some of it floats above the water, the smaller pieces get carried by water currents and accumulates in certain areas - the most famous of which is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a 500-mile long area of plastic toxic waste that extends from California all the way to the Sea of Japan.

Two additional areas of plastic waste have been discovered recently, one near the Antarctica and the other, off the coast of Chile, South America. Each year, over 100,000 marine animals choke on these debris, and die.

Plastiki's test run went well and David is hoping that with a few more tweaks the Catamaran will be ready to commence its inaugural journey to Sydney, Australia in early March.

Besides David and some crewmembers, the boat will also carry four scientists from the Scripps Research Institute, who will study the effects of pollution on marine life. David also plans on stopping at numerous ports along the way, where he will educate adults and kids about the impact of plastic pollution. Plastiki, will of course be equipped with the state-of-art technology, allowing David to write about his daily adventures on http://www.adventureecology.com.

While the technology behind Plastiki is more sophisticated, this is not the first bottle ship to sail our oceans. In 2008, two Eco-mariners, Dr. Marcus Eriksen and Joel Pascal, set sail from Long BeachCalifornia to Hawaii in their boat Junk, which was built on six pontoons (hulls that run lengthwise from front to back), filled with 15,000 plastic bottles (video below).

We wish Plastiki and its crew the best of luck, and believe that we can all contribute to David's mission to save the Earth - one plastic bottle at a time!

Sources: Sfgate.com, mnn.com, popsci.com