by Rachel Cernansky


This may look familiar to anyone who remembers the Plastiki, the plastic bottle boat that sailed an 8,000-mile journey across the Pacific. But this one’s in Lamu, a tiny island off the northern coast of Kenya, where a man has been making this boat—perhaps lower-tech than the Plastiki—out of plastic bottles and old flip flops (referred to locally as slippers).
The photos are courtesy of Arthur Buliva, who happened to be in Lamu several months ago and see the boat under construction. He has kindly shared these pictures.


The photos were also featured at AfriGadget, which featured Buliva’s description of the boat:
He says that he collects plastic water bottles that the tourists throw on the beach. He also wakes up early in the morning to collect bottles washed ashore from the sea. With these he has constructed the (in his own words, “first in its kind”) boat. He water-proofs it by sealing the gaps with used slippers collected in the very same way. Then boils tar in order to glue the components all together.


(Source: www.treehugger.com )