It’s a very rainy September day—the heavy downpour casts the marina waters in a diffused light. But the cobalt blue hull of research vessel Plastic Odyssey stands out, as does the bold statement on its top deck “Clean up the past. Build the future.”

The ship was in Singapore as a stopover on its around-the-world expedition visiting coastal areas most affected by plastic pollution. Armed with 10 plastic valorisation machines on board, including a washing tank, a crusher, a compactor, an extruder, a press, and a plate oven, the 130ft vessel demonstrates how plastic waste can be repurposed.

The ship set sail from Marseille, France, in October 2022 with the aim to cover 30 countries in three years, especially the coastal regions in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

“We reach coastal cities where there is a leakage of plastic into the environment and the sea, and help develop local solutions—we develop local micro-factories that can transform waste into an end product,” explains Alexandre Dechelotte (Alex), Cofounder and Managing Director of Plastic Odyssey, the non-governmental organisation (NGO) that owns the ship.

As we chat, Plastic Odyssey is getting ready to sail out of Singapore towards Cambodia, Vietnam, the Philippines and other countries in Southeast Asia. She carries 18 to 20 people at any given time: a crew of eight and a team that plays a crucial role in amplifying the project’s impact during stopovers. This time, it includes two volunteers from Singapore and Indonesia.

Simon Bernard, the other Co-founder and CEO, lives on the ship, while Alex, being a father of two—a daughter, 8, and a son, 5—takes care of the operations on land, hopping on board in between.

FUELLING A PASSION

“Since young, I have always needed to be around the sea,” muses Alex, recalling summers spent fishing and diving with his family on a small island in Brittany, France. Sailing was an obvious vocation, so as a young teenager, he joined The National Maritime College of France in Marseille, and trained to be a Merchant Navy officer.

He met Simon, who was driven by the same passion for the ocean, at the school. “For all the six years of training, we were in the same classrooms, working on projects together related to nature and sports— anything other than class programme work,” he laughs.

It was in their last year that the seed for Plastic Odyssey was sown. Simon had just returned from an expedition to Senegal and was deeply disturbed by the plastic pollution there. He wanted to find a way for coastal areas with limited plastic waste management to have access to low-tech recycling solutions.

Having already worked together on a recycling project, Alex didn’t need much convincing and got on board immediately.

Plastic Odyssey started as a very small NGO in France before being incorporated into a company in 2019 so that they could buy a boat to do the work they had set out to do.

MAKING WAVES

Barely 22 years old at that time, the duo had youth, and a lot of enthusiasm and creativity on their side, but had to work hard to convince people of their potential to bring about longterm impact.

Their first boat was symbolically named Ulysse—it was a 6m-long vessel with an inbuilt pyrolyser for converting plastic into fuel through a process of thermal decomposition. As it was too small a boat to embark on a journey around the world, they started off with an expedition around France, finishing dramatically on the busy streets of Paris. At the top of the Galeries Lafayette, to be exact, pitches in Alex. “We stopped traffic and hauled the boat 35 metres above the ground to the top of the store using a crane. It was a crazy stunt, but it made people start taking us seriously.”

With a bit more funding on hand, the hunt for a larger research vessel culminated in the Plastic Odyssey in 2019, an old research vessel that was in working condition.

Unfortunately, they discovered asbestos all over the vessel—despite it being sold to them with an asbestos-free certification—and a weakness in the hull. The pandemic put another dent in their plans, but the duo persevered and the ship was fully ready—completely redone— to set out for its expedition in late 2022.

The ship has sailed to over 20 countries since, and to some very remote islands including Henderson Island, which is part of the Pitcairn Island Group in the Pacific Ocean.

Although extremely remote, uninhabited and surrounded by beautiful crystal-clear turquoise waters, it is marked as the most polluted in the world due to floating plastic. The Plastic Odyssey crew stayed on the island for 10 days and cleared 10 tonnes of plastic from its beaches—they had to use parasails to airlift the trash off the island as it is protected by a coral reef. The waste was recycled into furniture for a small island community nearby.

The duo have seen many such devastations in the course of their expedition, which is why reducing plastic pollution for the future has been crucial to their work. They do that by raising awareness wherever they sail to and also holding workshops on board the ship for children, youth, corporates and government organisations.

REWARDING WORK

There have been challenges aplenty in the past eight years of their conservation journey, including bureaucratic hurdles, refusing them entry into certain ports and preventing them from conducting educational workshops on board. But wherever they have been able to reach, the favorable response and the visible impact created has made it worth the struggles.

By teaming up with local entrepreneurs and conservationists, the team has been able to train multiple coastal communities around the world to convert low-value plastic into useful products. From pavement tiles and plastic lumber that can be used as pontoons or for other construction purposes to lifestyle products such as chairs and tables, these products serve as a source of income and means of employment for these communities.

Then there are those rewards that are visible yet not quantifiable, says Alex of the awareness they have been able to create, especially among young children.

They have indeed come a long way and made a name for themselves on the world stage. “We started small, but we have convinced people around us that we were people to be contended with,” says Alex. “Eight years ago, Simon was a nobody, but today he is famous in not just the conservation world but also with the scientific community,” he adds with evident pride.

The expedition may run longer than three years, they both agree, as there is much to be done towards cleaning the past and building the future.

The original article was published on the November/ December 24 issue of Longitude, ONE°15 Marina Sentosa Cove’s Club magazine. Read it here.