Crafty protest
Trio to sleep on‘boat’ built from waste plastic bottles
A kayak fanatic and two pals are to spend the night on a giant raft made entirely of plastic bottles.
They’re making the astonishing protest to sock it to world leaders when they attend the climate summit in November.
The trio – known only as Paul, Kerry and Crystal – will all be in tents on their homemade vessel.
The thousands of bottles will have been cleared from the banks of the White Cart Water.
Paul,45, of Paisley, runs Calamity Kayaking and has become well-known for clearing waste from the river.
He said: “It strikes me I need to make a point to show the politicians what is happening on the planet.
“I want the world to stop talking about it and start doing something.
“They just seem to set targets and not really bother about them.
“I came up with the idea purely because of the volume of plastic bottles I cleared from one relatively small section of riverbank.
“It was like walking on a plastic carpet, it was horrible.
“My raft will let people see how much plastic waste is out there.
“The pollution is bad and this is my way of showing them . . . this is the real pandemic.”
The COP26 climate change conference will be held on the banks of the River Clyde in Glasgow from November 1 to 12.
About 30,000 delegates and media are expected to attend, including 200 “world leaders”.
Pa u l plans to safely anchor the raft downstream just outside the shipping lane where the Cart meets the Clyde.
Sheets of plywood will be layed on top of the bags to form a deck.
The spot which triggered his planned protest was at Westway behind Porterfield Road in Renfrew.
It had so much debris that Paul filled 57 bags with up to 70 bottles in each one.
He roped them together as a test raft and floated it down the river.
And even with around 4,000 bottles he said: “It is amazingingly buoyant and actually feels like a pontoon.
“If I was in trouble on the water I’d rather be on this raft rather than a kayak – it’s pretty bombproof.
“It will have no trouble supporting us for the night . . . just wait to you see the size of the big one.”
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