Man building his own island out of plastic bottles

Just came across this and I must say it has made my mind try to consider all kinds of possibilities on a grander scale then what this fellow has done, which in itself is quite remarkable.

We all know plastic bottles are a huge trash problem. Imagine maybe creating whole new communities. Im sure you members could dream up many more things that could be done. Maybe we ourselves wont get to do it, but if anything, it makes for a cool dream...Just how many ideas can we come up with?Will be interesting to see.

Enjoy watching the small island home this man has created from mere plastic bottles.



LINK just in case

This could be the answer to that floating island of garbage in the Pacific.

Stick a shack on it, call it yours and refuse taxation of any kind.

Within days you'll have every nation on the planet trying to clean it up, lock you up or at least invade it, kill you and call it their own.

he'll have trouble floating out to sea, the mexican government already declared it mexican soil.

reply to post by onehuman


Love it! Thanks.

Now the "wanna-do-it-too" in me has some questions.

1. Obviously, you need to be somewhere calm. Any waves and this thing is toast. No where to put it?

2. How long do the bottles last watertight? I guess he will find out

3. If I try this next to some wealthy resort area here in the US, no one should have a problem with it, right? I could get the sand for my island from the traps on the back 9.

reply to post by onehuman


Starred and flagged.

We've got a island of plastic floating around the Pacific Google "Pacific garbage patch" bigger now than the size of Texas.

I don't know if this guy can float around on the open seas as waves get pretty darn high but here is one man with a dream and proof you can take lemons and make lemon aid with the right attitude.

Kudos to this man!

Thank you for sharing some good inspiring news.

This reminds me of another thread where a member wanted to get some ats'ers together and purchase an island. A great idea but probably not feasible do to the monetary strife that would be involved, everyone wanting more for them selves and less for others based on what they put in.

I think this idea may have a better chance of "floating" as it were. If we could get together a group of like minded individuals and build an island, have our labour be our only investment, then perhaps we could share an ideal life as people, humans, instead of fighting each other in a never ending cascade of greed and destitution. Work to better your neighbour, not yourself.

S&F

reply to post by thisguyrighthere

Originally posted by thisguyrighthere

This could be the answer to that floating island of garbage in the Pacific.

As far as I know, these are still just ideas, as opposed to the guy in the video who actually did it.

Developers have revealed plans to create a habitable island from 44,000 tonnes of waste that is currently floating in the Pacific Ocean.

www.cash2recycle.co.uk...

WHIM architecture is working on the design of a prototype for Recycled island.

First impression prototype Recycled island

The prototype will exist of one single family home and surroundings to make it self-sufficient. With the prototype we want to show and test the realization of Recycled island. The prototype is a small version of Recycled island, but has similar sustainable and self sufficient characteristics as the overall concept.

The creation of the prototype will illustrate:

1: The plastic pollution worldwide.

2: The potential of plastic recycling.

3. Living with the rising sea level.

4. Sustainable and self sufficient housing.


The realization of the prototype still depends on finding the correct funding and collaborations.

www.recycledisland.com...

That is super cool, but somehow I don't see it as sea worthy. He claims it survived a few hurricanes but the open ocean and tidal zones are another deal all together. I just cannot see it surviving those extremes. Especially if it bounced around on a reef or something......

that is cooler than cool....and the fact that it has survived hurricanes and tropical storms answers the question of whether or not it's built to last. I suppose a whole chain of them could be built...creating a community of like minded people who could trade goods and services amongst eachother. Wouldnt that be a great set up. Im even picturing floating gardens and farms. The possibilities are endless. S&F

reply to post by ABNARTY

I just love that! Thank you for making me laugh. I am sure a law would be passed really quickly if you built your little island next to a wealthy resort.

I love the OP. That is ingenuity at it's best. Someone mentioned how long those airtight bottles will last. I was wondering the same thing. Hmmmm, I will file that idea away in case we need an atol like in Water World. . .just saying. . .

I always drink from bottled water because I can never, ever afford to buy the gravity-fed filtration system that removes fluoride. I live paycheck to paycheck and barely scrape by.

I do recycle tho which is impractical since I can only do it it at my university. Love the day I take full grocery bags with plastic bottles to school.... But anyway, I got a lot of bottles and continuously get more. So if you think of some cool ideas then pass them on.

Nice vid.

That is probably the coolest thing I've ever seen! Ever since I was little girl I would tell my family I wanted to live on our own island and never have to leave lol - I'll never look at a bottle the same way again!

why Mexico ?

I am not bashing the idea at all (It's actually a very good idea) just wondered why there.
I love the concept of your own island and he clearly has put a lot of work into that.

Maybe he can call himself the king of the island.

This reminds me of that other 'brit' bloke that lives on an island on his own (posted a couple of months back on ATS).

Why is it us brit's are doing these things ?

reply to post by onehuman


its actually a pretty good idea. i was reading about 4 years ago now a site called SQUAT planet, it was a website i believed at the time rolled out by the OCCUPY people but now that i think about it it probably was designed by the average joe looking for a roof.. but anywhoo, umm there was a guy on squat planet that did this down in the gulf just after Katrina, the latest update was that a hurricane had destroyed his island - he had an island paradise, complete with vegetation to grow his own food, shelter to sleep under.. it looked like a great place. it really got me thinking.. what if we could do this? if we were just ten miles out of shore we wouldnt be in US waters thus not subject to US LAWS or taxes BUT THEN INTERNATIONAL LAW would take over. i only see one problem, ow would one defend her from say PIRATES or other invasions..???

Thats what i call a real heaven
luckiest man on earth to have think and made time to build this floating island
should i though of that when i was 10 yrs old .. i would have a city by now with flying cars
have many kids to help around and grand kids

best thread in a while .. it make you dream a lot about the "what if"
thank you for sharing
SNF

reply to post by jaynkeel

Originally posted by jaynkeel

That is super cool, but somehow I don't see it as sea worthy. He claims it survived a few hurricanes but the open ocean and tidal zones are another deal all together. I just cannot see it surviving those extremes. Especially if it bounced around on a reef or something......

If he keeps it up, it will only get bigger and bigger. The bigger it is, the better chances it will have against those more extreme conditions. How big? I have no idea.




reply to post by badkittie748

Originally posted by badkittie748

i only see one problem, ow would one defend her from say PIRATES or other invasions..???

Have nothing at all that is valuable. If you have nothing they want, there will be nothing to take. You could also rig the entire outer perimeter with various booby traps.

"Have nothing at all that is valuable. If you have nothing they want, there will be nothing to take"

That's why I drive a Kia RIo. lol

I could leave that unlocked in the middle of London and it wouldn't get touched !

reply to post by diddy1234


Perhaps a better question would be why aren't the Brits doing this in Britain?

If it were me?: most definitely take the clime of Mexico over the Channel.

That is the coolest video I have seen in ages. What a brilliant human.

Talk about out of the box thinking...just genius.

He did that with absolutely no budget.

Imagine if you sold your house and all the junk you think you need and built one of those you would have all the mod cons and still be living it up with no taxes and living free.

I have my retirement plan sorted.

Find a tropical cove get together a group of like minded individuals build your own islands and live as a floating community. If your neighbors are not to your liking just move your entire property over 100 meters and problem solved.

My mind is blowing up with the possibilities.

Imagine the kind of floating island you could engineer if you had millions. It would be totally sea worthy and fully self sufficient. You could even have your own eco system on it. birds animals plants.

Ya, he needs to take that bad boy actually out to sea. I bet it is the only island in the world that could come apart in a hurricane. Wow, I was watching as I typed this, and both of those points were addressed, lol. Figures. Very hard to come up with even an original sentence these days.

I actually built a small one of these when I was younger, but it sank...Turns out that without the screw-caps on, the bottles aren't very buoyant. Just brainstorming while sitting here typing this, I cannot help but think that there are methods for building the base of one of these floating islands that are almost as cheap, but more structurally sound. But then again, it doesn't matter if a few of your bottles are compromised for whatever reason, as they act like thousands of individual buoyancy devices. With fewer, but larger, scavenged floating mechanisms you run the risk of compromising stability, or floatability, if just one fails.

So it may not look all that great underneath, but the bottles obviously work, and work rather well if they have survived two hurricanes AND Mexico is trying to annex them. When is the last time any nation tried to annex your plastic bottle collection? Granted there is "land" on top of them though. You could almost build one of these without spending much, if any, money at all. Just think how cool it would be to have thousands of these floating around the world's oceans.

Using GPS, you float up to the nearest floating convenience store to buy a burrito and a chocolate milk, but not together because that's kind of gross. Probably would never happen, but if someone had the area to scavenge in, the gumption, know how, and work ethic at their disposal, I don't see why they too couldn't make something similar. I suppose what this guy has to worry about, besides pirates on the high seas, is his nets being compromised, and his bottles floating away, leaving an entire side of his island sagging into the sea. Boat ramp anyone? I don't know how long those nets can last underwater while still retaining their structural integrity, but if they are made for the water, they will probably last a good while. Still though, maintenance doesn't seem like it would be that fun, AND you would have to know how to dive using scuba gear or something. He probably didn't have to use scuba gear to build this island though, if he worked from strictly the bottom up.

This guy is pretty much a genius in my book, although some may think it doesn't take much brains to come up with and construct something of this nature. That may be true, but for me the genius lies in the combined phases needed to pull this off, namely the vision, planning, construction, and etc. phases. Kudos to this guy for sure though. Very cool. I actually remember seeing this episode of Ripley's years ago when the show was still airing, and they were making new episodes. It was cool then, and is still just as cool now. But many times with things like this, strange and ingenious things, there is someone out there who has already topped it, but it just hasn't been brought to the mainstream public's attention yet. That's me hinting for someone to make a new thread.