A boat made of 12,000 plastic bottles has set sail on a voyage from San Francisco to Sydney to spread awareness about pollution in the world's oceans.
Environmentalist and banking heir David De Rothschild and a crew set out on the appropriately named Plastiki catamaran.
Their 11,000-nautical mile journey will go past the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a sea of waste about five times the size of the UK or twice that of Texas.
Four out of five plastic bottles end up in a landfill, according to the UN.
"It is time we beat waste and this is an out-of-sight, out-of-mind issue that needs to be addressed," Mr De Rothschild told the BBC earlier this month.
The 31-year-old adventurer, who has completed expeditions to both poles and various jungles, was already tweeting on Saturday, hours after the boat set sail on its three-month voyage.
"Travelling 2.0 Knots ummm! That's a lot of ocean ahead!" he said on his Twitter page. "Just saw our first bit marine debris - a plastic cup!"
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