Collecting Discarded Ocean Plastic

Over the course of my university life I have been able to define myself as a designer by what interests me and what I think is important. The two things that this comes down to are
1: D.I.Y., The culture that surrounds it, the practice of doing it, and all of the benefits that go along with that.
2: Sustainability, creating in a sustainable way that does not impact the earth negatively, whether this be recycling old materials, making the most of green spaces, or any number of other things.

For more insight into my ideas please see my blog: http://sustdiy.blogspot.co.nz/


Our second lecture of this course was inspiring to say the least. As soon as I saw the calm waves seen  of the video below I knew I was watching something special.

I'll try not to get too poetic about my feelings towards this video, but I thought two things after watching this video for the first time. 1. Why aren't more people doing this, and 2. I have to do this.

After a small internet search  I found a couple of videos showing that people already are doing this on an amateur level.
See the videos here for a gow to turn old plastic into a new and beautiful slingshot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_XUJwINdLw
Melting plastic into a brick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyZMWLkcfes
Turning plastic into a slingshot.

Needless to say it was my turn to have a go.
I started with a walk on my local beach in Makara.

My girlfriend Shellie and I walked the beach for 40 minutes filling our buckets to the top. There were bottle caps and plastic rope, and all other plastics you can think of.

Back at home this is our haul.
Before I could use it it needed to be sorted and washed.

Here is your daily dose of disturbing images.

As seen here, plastic discarded from people everyday that gets washed down rivers and out into the ocean gets mistaken for food by birds such as the three species of endangered albatross (There are a further 19 species of threatened albatross).

In an ideal world everyone would go out into the ocean, or down to the beach, fish out some old plastic, and use that instead of making more new stuff.

I want to work further in the area of plastic recycling. More to come.