Can a boat made of flip-flops stop us using so much plastic?
Three years ago a group of Kenyans on the island of Lamu organised a beach cleanup, collecting more than 30 tonnes of plastic waste. Out of that rubbish was seven tonnes of flip-flops. Those shoes now form part of the Flipflopi, the world’s first dhow (traditional sailing boat) to be made entirely out of discarded plastic.
The rainbow-coloured boat, which was designed by an academic from Northumbria University’s School of Design, set off on its 500km maiden voyage from the Lamu archipelago on 24 January, and is expected to reach Zanzibar, Tanzania on 7 February.
To find the best way to process and shape the material for the dhow, the team drew on academic expertise. Simon Scott-Harden, a senior lecturer in design for industry at Northumbria University, helped process the materials in a way that could be reused and repurposed. “That’s the key message,” says Scott-Harden. “Plastic is great but we need to look after it and work out ways of giving it a second life. We’re desperately keen to show that this is a global problem that everybody in the world should be responsible for.”
The boat was made by a team of Lamu builders, who melted, shaped and carved the plastic exactly as they would with wood. They moulded more than 25 tonnes of melted plastic into parts of the boat, and also used more than 200,000 discarded flip-flops.
“The Flipflopi project has always been about encouraging change in a positive way, making people smile first and then sharing the very simple message that single-use plastics really don’t make sense,” says Flipflopi project founder Ben Morison, a Kenyan travel expert who spent much of his childhood there.
Kenya introduced the world’s toughest plastic bag ban in 2017 but change in habits still takes time, and much of the waste ending up on its shores comes from Asia.
The plastic problem has never been more acute. Plastic has been discovered at the deepest point on Earth and in the stomachs of deep sea creatures. Microplastics have been found in the remote Swiss mountains and in our tap water. The UN estimates by 2050 there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish, with some 12m tonnes of plastic entering our oceans every year – equivalent to a rubbish truck-full every minute.
“It’s going to take a generation to make a change, but action needs to be taken. And through education, most departments will be on course to teaching some form of environmental issues,” says Scott-Harden.
Academics have been chugging away at the issue for years, notably from the early 90s, when researchers found 60-80% of the waste in the ocean was non-biodegradable plastic. Years later, in 2004, University of Plymouth oceanographer Richard Thompson coined the term “microplastics” to describe the billions of miniscule bits of plastic found in our oceans.
The Flipflopi project is just one of a number of innovative projects raising awareness of the plastic issue, with a growing number of academics becoming involved. Scott-Harden thinks that collaboration is vital to change mindsets. “Projects like this can galvanise cross-faculty partnerships like I’ve not really seen before,” he says.
Over the past few years, researchers at the University of Bath have partnered with Goa Engineering College in India to look at using discarded plastic waste in concrete instead of sand. The research released in December found replacing sand with similarly sized and shaped plastic particles from groundup plastic bottles produced a mixture almost as strong as conventional concrete, which could help reduce India’s high levels of plastic pollution.
“It is really a viable material for use in some areas of construction that might help us tackle issues of not being able to recycle the plastic and meeting a demand for sand,” researcher John Orr said.
Last summer, University of Exeter research student Emily Duncan took part in an all-female expedition – involving photographers, filmmakers and women from other fields – sailing across the Pacific to learn more about plastic pollution. An expert on the impact of plastics on marine turtles, Duncan was running the science part of the programme, collaborating with researchers in Hawaii and Vancouver – the stops on the first leg.
“I don’t think we’re going to be able to solve this issue using just one group of expertise. We all have a role to play in this issue. That’s why public awareness is increasing, because everyone can do their bit, and to solve the problem we’re going to need to put all of our heads together,” says Duncan.
“We’re just at the tip of the iceberg at the moment about what’s potentially going on. It’s important for research to carry on into all different aspects of it.”