Dancing With Mother Nature: An Adventure For Change Across Antarctica

Potential in plastic: A team travels to Antarctica in a vehicle made mostly of recycled plastic to pave a new environmental (and life) path for us all.

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I’ve always believed that a lack of comfort is needed before change happens. It’s like they say, “Life happens outside of your comfort zone.” Well… so does change. I took that to heart and joined Clean2Antarctica on an expedition in Antarctica as part of the media team. We ventured on towards the South Pole for 30 days, without any fossil fuel, in a car made primarily from recycled plastic. 

THE BEGINNING

It all started where most times, it ends: with trash. The creators of Clean2Antarctica, Edwin & Liesbeth ter Velde, are a normal, married couple living in Zaandam, The Netherlands. One day, as they threw away yet another piece of plastic in their kitchen, they asked themselves: 

“Why does this plastic lose its value after you take out what was in it? There is nothing in its essence that has changed, so why does our way of perceiving it change?” 

It is only our minds that make something ‘trash.’

It got them thinking. That plastic that normally ends in the (recycle) bin served its purpose of holding our food, but what other purpose could it serve? Could we use it to do something else? Why did it have to end here?

If plastic could be considered a building material, and not trash, what could be made of it?  “Why not a car?” Edwin imagined. He devised ideas for a car made predominantly from recycled plastic, with solar panels that make it