Jeremy Rowsell, an Australian pilot and concerned environmentalist, has seen plastic littering beaches around the world, and knows of the micro-plastic particles ingested by fish and sea birds. His hope four years ago was to fly a Cessna from Australia to London and back – powered by fuel made from that waste plastic. That event never came, and Rowsell is back with a still ambitious plan to fly an RV-9A from San Francisco, California (the world’s innovation hub, according to the project’s web site) to Anchorage, Alaska (the world’s climate change frontier), following a safer route than the originally planned oceanic journey. The Problem and One Solution Partnering with Plasticenergy, a Spanish company that uses “end-of-life” plastic to make commercially viable fuel “suitable for all diesel engines,” Rowsell’s flight would demonstrate that keeping plastic waste out of the world’s oceans could have economic, as well as environmental, benefits. In the oceans, plastic photodegrades over time, turning into smaller and smaller …
