(PRLEAP.COM) American adventurer Ken Albertsen, perturbed by reading a report in the science magazine Discover, which mentioned the decomposition time for a one liter plastic bottle as ‘forever’, got inspired to think of ways in which non-biodegradable plastic bottles could be put to use. He opted for a plan to use them to build a catamaraft’ – which is craft which is part catamaran and part raft.

Ken designed and built the catamaraft and, without even testing it on water beforehand, took it out to launch on the monsoon-swollen Mae Kok river. The Mae Kok tumbles out of Shan State Burma and flows eastward for several hundred kilometers across northernmost Thailand towards its confluence with the Maekong River. On that maiden voyage, Ken floated and paddled roughly 60 miles without losing more than an inch of floatation height from the craft.

The catamaraft was made from a 124 recycled one-liter bottles. Ken resides in northern Thailand, so he went to a local re-cycling center and bought 200 of the bottles from the recycler for 165 baht ($5). The design of the craft relied upon two 12 foot lengths of bamboo for its basic structure. The only store-bought item in its construction was a roll of packing tape. Long lengths of bottles were attached to the bamboo structural pieces with the tape. An abandoned plastic chair was given new life by having its legs cut off and secured in place as a seat for the craft.

The 12 lengths of bottles for floatation, were made by securing capped bottles end to end. To connect the bottles to form the tubes, he cut the top and bottom ends off additional bottles, and use the resulting open-ended tubes as a connectors. In other words, two capped bottles, laid end to end, would get set firmly in to the each end of the tube of the third bottle which had its top and bottom cut off. The tight fit was then taped with postal packing tape, making a continuous airtight chamber as long as you please. In a short time, six 12 foot tubes were made. With additional postal tape, the tubes were secured tightly around the bamboo lengths – forming two sets of three tubes.

Ken’s plans for building two or three-person catamarafts would naturally entail many more bottles for additional buoyancy. There are also plans to use the re-cycled plastic bottles as roofing shingles, but that’s a story for another day.