After its world tour, the Plastic Odyssey boat returns to France with anti-waste solutions | TF1 Info

• Having left three years ago to document solutions to fight plastic pollution, Simon Bernard, Alexandre Dechelotte and their crew arrive in Marseille this Saturday.
• During a tour of France, the founders of Plastic Odyssey want to emphasize the reduction of plastic at the source, and share the discoveries made in all the countries crossed to collect and recycle plastic.
• Encounter.

A great lesson in the ingenuity of the human race. When it was time to return to Marseille on Saturday, after a three-year world tour, here is what we found in the luggage of the Plastic Odyssey crew. “When people have nothing, when they live under permanent financial constraint, they show great ingenuity“, testifies, still admiring, Simon Bernard, one of the co-founders of the expedition.

For three years, aboard their 40 meter long boat, the men and women who make up this unique crew in the world set out to meet those who suffer from plastic pollution, but above all who are looking for solutions. “We knew we were going to see plastic everywhere, and we weren’t disappointed” testifies the thirty-year-old, former merchant navy officer.

Senegal, Costa Rica, Philippines, India… in each of the forty-five stopovers, they saw tons of plastic waste piling up in open-air dumps. “There is a phenomenon of self-ignition of waste, so these discharges burn constantlysays the co-founder of Plastic Odyssey. The air is breathable” They also found a lot of pieces of plastic washed up on the coast, torn by rocks or reduced to the state of microplastics after a long journey at sea. “We spent countless hours collecting small pieces of fishing net“, describes the co-founder of Plastic Odyssey.

45 étapes à travers le monde

What discourages the joyful troop? “Never !répond sans hésiter Simon Bernard. On the contrary, it confirms to us that it is very useful. The more we see catastrophic things, the more we tell ourselves that it is important.”

Especially since the crew did not just document the presence of plastic around the globe, nor even collect it. The objective of Plastic Odyssey goes well beyond: it is in fact about identifying the solutions that exist everywhere on the planet to collect and recycle plastic and then sharing them, step by step, in order to snowball.

“The problem with plastic is that it is often not easy to process it without losing moneyexplains Simon Bernard. It is a real challenge to collect and recycle it independently, on a local scale. But the good news is that we can do it. We saw profitable models everywhere.”

Profitable factories to recycle material

During their many stops, they visited more than 200 factories, of all sizes and with all types of solutions. “We’ve brought together everything we’ve learned into a mook that will be broadcast to schools and universities around the worldreports the co-founder. Our goal is to transmit knowledge to replicate the right solutions.”

In their wake, around ten recycling plants have emerged from the ground, and Plastic Odyssey aims to initiate 200 other projects of this type within five to seven years. “They will make it possible to process 100,000 tonnes of plastic, or 1% of plastic pollution in the ocean.décrit Simon Bernard. It’s not nothing and it shows that there is a possible way to deal with the past.”

The crew also discovered surprising and effective methods to combat plastic pollution. Thus, in Cambodia, teachers make their students sing a song encouraging them to reduce their plastic consumption. Each stage was also an opportunity to visit the Plastic Odyssey boat, unique in the world: entrepreneurs, citizens and students were able to discover this floating laboratory on board which has machines for recycling plastic materials.

Challenging expeditions

Among the 45 stages, some were more striking than others because they turned out to be real expeditions, almost into unknown territory. Thus, in February 2024, the crew cleaned Henderson Island, in the Pitcairn archipelago, in South Polynesia. Due to its geographical location, it holds a sad record: its 38 square kilometers are loaded with 38 million pieces of plastic. An inventory which was carried out using drones, which makes it possible to document plastic pollution.

Because this is the other credo of Plastic Odyssey: they want to go where it is not profitable to collect plastic, in these territories at the end of the world where pollution wreaks havoc on unique ecosystems in the world. For this extraordinary mission, they can count on the support of their partner, UNESCO, with which they have identified 25 classified sites that must be cleaned as a priority. Last year, they went for the first time to the Aldabra Attol, in the Seychelles, in the Indian Ocean. On site, they found 400 tonnes of fishing nets and 37 tonnes of plastic flip-flops. Never seen before.

To collect this plastic, you also have to show great ingenuity. In Henderson, the crew built a floating platform to transport waste to the boat. They also used a parachute to fly bags filled with plastic debris over the coral reef, which prevented the boat from approaching.

Kite wing, kite, floating platform…

Recently, in Cape Verde, they faced another difficulty. On the island of Santa Lucia, the waste washed up on a coast very exposed to winds and currents, but difficult to access by sea. The crew therefore dropped anchor on the opposite coast and decided to take the land route to carry the debris away. A transhumance of plastic is not obvious, in this landscape of desert and rocks. “We had the idea of ​​building a sort of cart, pulled by a kitesays Simon Bernard, the Géo Trouvetou of the team. This allowed us to pull up to 500 kg of waste in one crossing.”

The thirty-year-old is already imagining “professionalize“his invention, by making one”little wagon train“to evacuate waste by sail in the most remote places. As for collecting waste, often small debris from fishing nets or small pieces of plastic seized at the cost of back pain, Simon Bernard has another idea: “I’m thinking about developing a cart system on which it would be possible to lie down to collect wastehe imagines. We need to find tools to scale up.” He also talks about the use of robotics, sharing the memory of an agricultural machine equipped with robotic arms to pick up broccoli. “This could work for plastic“, espère-t-il. 

Because here too, the objective is to reproduce the experience. The inhabitants of the places visited must be able to use the solutions and techniques identified. “Until we reduce plastic at the source, it will continue to wash upadmet Simon Bernard. But if we clean regularly, it’s less difficult than these huge collections that we were faced with.”

We acted as guinea pigs to study how we could reduce our plastic consumption.

Simon Bernard, co-founder of Plastic Odyssey

To go further, Simon Bernard and his crew are working on the design of a new ship, capable of reaching isolated places and especially of transporting a large quantity of waste. The current boat can accommodate five tonnes, the next 200 tonnes. “There will be a hold with a factory to process them directly on board“, dreams the thirty-year-old.

But before that, the Plastic Odyssey crew is embarking on a unique tour of France of around ten stages. Objective: open the doors of the boat to the public. On board, passengers will be able to discover recycling machines, low-tech innovations and above all, the solutions put in place by the crew to live without plastic.

Because after having traveled through the mountains of waste, contaminating the soil, water and ecosystems, Simon Bernard and his crew returned with one certainty: we must reduce pollution at the source and therefore reduce our consumption of plastic. To convince, the group decided to test the method themselves. “We played guinea pigs to study how we could reduce our plastic consumption“, explique Simon Bernard. 

They first carried out an inventory of their consumption: each month, they patiently spread the contents of their bins on the deck of the boat, before counting the waste one by one in order to classify it according to its origin.

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Then they transformed a part of the boat into a ‘zero waste laboratory’, with a crew member dedicated to the manufacture of everything that was previously contained in plastic: food, household products, cosmetics, dehydrator, etc.

The result is impressive: 6 kg of waste per person per year, compared to an average in France of 70 kg per person each year. On board, the public will also be able to discover the “water bar”, a water purification system which allowed them to drink water from the networks of the different cities visited, from India to Madagascar. “This allowed us to avoid the purchase of 30,000 bottles of water in three years“, calculates the co-founder.

“The objective is of course not to lecture our visitorsreassures Simon Bernard. But we want to show them that we have all the solutions within our reach to reduce our use of plastic.” An inspiring experience, which will be embodied, and this is unprecedented, by a sailboat in the colors of Plastic Odyssey departing from the Route du Rhum on November 1, 2026.

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