Flipflopi?
Flipflop is how flip-flops are called in the English language, and this is the name of our organization and our treasure.
His boat of colors?
We are a group of volunteers, each with their own background. One of the partners, Ben Morison, and I each own a travel agency; Ali Skanda is a well-known builder and carpenter, and we came together with the idea of ??building a boat, a plastic cube.
A traditional boat?
Yes, it is well known throughout the Indian Ocean, it has been sailing through those waters for the last 700 years, connecting East Africa and reaching as far as China.
The first of its kind in plastic?
Yes, the first 100% recycled plastic sailboat, nine meters long, built from the remains of bottles, buckets, shovels, toothbrushes and thousands of flip flops, and using the traditional techniques for the manufacture of this type of boats
What’s the point?
We need to recycle, our wonderful white sandy beaches in Kenya are full of plastic, but we didn’t want to be a nuisance, so we decided to create something positive, that was part of our culture and that allowed us to attract attention.
They have succeeded.
We have shown that it can be done with very few means, in an environment with very little technology, an archipelago of islands, Lamu, with 70% mangrove ecosystems and where we know very little about plastic management.
And here is the boat.
Everyone thought we were screwed, but within two years the cube was built, covered with 30,000 colorful flip flops. It attracted a lot of media attention and the United Nations, in its environmental program, supported our first expedition.
where did they go
From Lamu to Zanzibar, organizing lots of activities wherever we passed. The current was strong, we had many waves, another boat was sailing next to us, but ours was sailing better!
explain me
We have done three important expeditions, after going to Zanzibar, Flipflopi was at the United Nations headquarters in Nairobi during the Environment Assembly where an anti-plastic treaty was agreed in 2019. The next trip was to the lake Victory
But if it is surrounded by land!
Yes, but it connects Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Lake Victoria is heavily polluted and 40 million people depend on it. We worked with scientists, artists and musicians.
What did they organize there?
We circled the entire lake, a month’s crossing, and took the opportunity to do a study on microplastics, we did analysis from the surface to the deepest waters and found the presence of plastics everywhere, including in areas not populated
A pity
We don’t give up. We’ve set up a plastic recovery center, we buy tons of plastic from low-income communities, and we have a factory where we make boat parts, traditional furniture, and run training courses.
What are they in?
We try to preserve the heritage of Lamu Island by teaching traditional crafts: doors, chairs, benches, tables, Swahili thrones, like the one we gave to King Charles III…, but instead of wood made with plastic.
It’s a shame that wooden crafts are now made of plastic.
What is a pity is the indiscriminate exploitation of forests and the invasion of plastic throughout the world. Our contribution is to maximize the local economy by creating jobs and protecting our legacy within our archipelago.
Everything stays at home.
The population of Africa is growing exponentially and we ask ourselves how to prevent the plastic crisis we see in Southeast Asia from happening, what we can do here and now to have the necessary infrastructure to avoid a similar crisis.
What will be your next challenge?
We have built other traditional boats out of plastic for Lamu fishermen as an alternative to fiberglass, which is a very unsustainable material.
A viable model?
Absolutely, we have also built a small model that is used as a taxi in the archipelago and it works very well, it is finding a place in the local boating industry.
And does the dice sail well?
excellently We dream of building one 25 meters long to go around the world, the largest object ever built from recycled plastic.
