A junk raft is a type of home-built watercraft made of plastic bottles or other recycled materials constructed by and for three different sorts of audiences: artists and community-minded groups organizing recreational flotillas; environmentally concerned individuals seeking to draw attention to the problem of floating debris, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, and the need for recycling; and third world people who improvise small, functional watercraft from readily available materials.
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The JUNK Raft Project was organized by the Algalita Marine Research Foundation in Long Beach, California in 2008, to "creatively raise awareness about plastic debris and pollution in the ocean", and specifically the Great Pacific Garbage Patch trapped in the North Pacific Gyre, by sailing 2,600 miles across the Pacific Ocean on a 30-foot-long (9.1 m) raft made from an old Cessna 310 aircraft fuselage and six pontoons filled with 15,000 old plastic bottles. Crewed by Dr. Marcus Eriksen of the Foundation, and film-maker Joel Paschal, the raft set off from Long Beach, California on 1 June 2008, arriving in Honolulu, Hawaii on 28 August 2008. On the way, they gave valuable water supplies to Ocean rower Roz Savage, also on an environmental awareness voyage.[1][2][3]
The construction of the JUNK Raft began in April 2008 and was finished in May that year. The huge undertaking of constructing this seaworthy raft was aided by volunteers from the educational environmental programs of: Bell Elementary, Green Ambassadors, Muse Elementary, Santa Monica High School, and Westbridge School for Girls. The volunteers lent a hand by cleaning bottles, fastening bottle caps, and stuffing them into the recycled fisherman's net pontoon forms.[4]