Nurdles. Such a cute word. Sounds like a pool toy or a board game, perhaps. But they are nothing like that. Nurdles are plastic resin pellets that are the base material for all the plastic things that are generally made. From water bottles to synthetic clothing to plastic shopping bags. These plastic pellets are used to make a huge number of materials that probably fill your house. Over 250 billion pounds a year are shipped around the world to make lots of plastic stuff. I found this bunch in just 30 minutes by quickly looking at the high tide line along an approximately 10 foot long section of beach. The sad part of the story is that this beach, Punta Uva, is widely called one of the most idyllic beaches along the Carribbean Coast of Costa Rica. (insert picture of punta Uva)

These nurdles were by no means obvious. Normally I consider Punta Uva pretty much garbage-free. The beach is almost always empty, just the way I like it. Most of the beaches here on the Carribbean Coast are, especially compared to some of the mobbed beaches in the NY Metro area that I’m used to. The only reason I was actually looking for nurdles was that I read this article about all the plastic floating around in the ocean, from the famous North Pacific Gyre to the various other garbage-dump like vortexes of the seas. Frankly, I wasn’t sure I’d actually find any nurdles here in Costa Rica. It was hard to believe that a beautiful place like Punta Uva would have such a polution problem. But I’ve learned that this isn’t a problem with just any one country or any one beach. This problem is so widespread and insidious that it literally touches us all. In just 30 minutes of looking around a tide line, I found that even in my new country, sometimes dubbed as an eco-paradise, the world’s obsession with plastic still penetrates.

We’re on the eastern (Caribbean) coast of Costa Rica this week. We’re staying in Puerto Viejo looking for a long-term rental. We want to live on the beach near beautiful palm trees and azure waters, and beaches that range from pristine white sands to the black sands of Playa Negra, which come from volcanoes. But what I discovered is that these “pristine” beaches are not so pristine. I guess I didn’t really believe they were totally pristine to begin with. I mean, I’ve been hearing that the coral reefs are becoming quite damaged due to silty runoff from development for quite some time. But those nurdles came as quite a surprise. I mean, they are hard to see. During the first 5 minutes that I looked for them, I actually didn’t notice any. In fact, I could have sworn that those nurdles were actually tiny stones. But then one of them caught my eye and I realized the shape was a little too regular to be a stone. But I didn’t have my microscope down at the beach. So I did what I thought was the next best thing – I bit the suspect object between my teeth. It was then that I became sure that it was made of plastic. It may look like a tiny stone, but it felt like plastic. Once I knew what I was looking for, the nurdles were easy to find. And they were everywhere. I couldn’t stop looking for them. Every time I found one I would cringe. A passerby listening to me would have heard a crazy-woman with her face almost touching the sand, shouting words to myself like, “Oh my gosh! I can’t believe this!” I wonder now how many pieces of even smaller plastic were in my search area. I wouldn’t have been able to detect smaller pieces of plastic without a microscope, but I know they are there. After all, this kind of plastic never really disappears. I know from all my reading that it just breaks into smaller and smaller pieces, forming a not-so-delicious seawater soup. Soon we’ll have entire beaches partly made up of ground plastic, that is, if we don’t already have that.

Punta Uva, Costa Rica

When I came home and re-read some articles about floating plastic sea-trash, I kind of freaked. Evidently, plastic floating in the ocean is like a sponge for toxic chemicals like PCBs. I bit a few nurdles on the beach to see if they were plastic or rock. Granted, I spit them out. But PCBs? I think I might be radioactive right now. Think of that next time you get caught in a wave on your favorite beach and manage to accidentally swallow some water and a little sand. Likely, you swallowed some PCB-rich plastic too. You can’t escape it. It’s there, most likely on every beach in the world. And it’s not going away anytime soon. There seems to be no way to clean it up either. We don’t have special nurdle magnets.

Are you wondering how the nurdles got to my beach in Costa Rica? From all my reading, I’ve learned that there are several possibilities. One likely possibility is that they were washed off a ship. Millions of nurdles are shipped around the world every day, from plastic production plants to manufacturing plants. Just a pound of nurdles has about 25,000 pellets. Even when a ship loses a few handfulls here andthere, they scatter far and wide, travelling around the world. Sometimes they get caught in the North Pacific Gyre, also known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Yes, we have a garbage dump in the middle of the ocean, twice the size of Texas, and with no way to clean it up. And if those fallen nurdles don’t get stuck in an ocean gyre, they float around on currents until they land on your favorite beach. Or maybe they get eaten by some krill before that (and then the krill gets eaten by a whale). Or maybe a seabird gobbles it up. Back to the source again, maybe the nurdles are being transported by train instead of boat. But a pound or two falls off the train onto the ground. Then it rains and washes the nurdles into a stream, and then a river, and then right back out to sea. No matter how it happens, it all comes to the same thing in the end.

I challenge all my readers who visit beaches: look for your own nurdles. Do your own experiment like I did. Take a short section of beach and see how many you can find. Look close, and don’t mistake a nurdle for a rock. Maybe if we all face the hidden existence of the nurdle, we can all do something to stop this before we have entire nurdle beaches. Before all sea creatures (and us!) are poisoned.

I think maybe the best we can do at this point is to stop using all that plastic. There’s no other way. If we want plastic, nurdles will continue to be produced at a huge rate and will find their way into the sea. I mean, we have bigger problems than just nurdles anyway. I found many larger pieces of plastic on that day at the beach. Plus, many of those lovely facial and body scrubs we use these days actually have plastic pellets in them. Can you believe that? We are actually washing our faces in plastic and then washing the tiny plastic balls right down the drain. It’s mind-boggling. It isn’t just plastic pellets either. It’s the plastic grocery bags, water bottles, sand toys, and every other plastic doo-hickey you have in your house. Our lives are filled with plastic. The nurdles are just the most hidden evidence. They are so numerous, they won’t be hidden for long.

Look for them. I dare you.

More information on ocean trash & nurdles:

What’s a nurdle?

The World’s Rubbish Dump…

Trashed

Why Plastic is the Scourge of Sea Life

Message in a Bottle

Being without a dryer shouldn’t sound so bad. After all, it’s great for the environment. When we lived in New York, I wanted to set up a clothes line for quite some time in order to both save energy and a little money.  Unfortunately, our New York house had several logistical issues that made clotheslines a very difficult proposition.

Here in Costa Rica, things are quite different from New York. I have met very few people who actually own a dryer here. Everyone has a clothesline. Actually, everyone has multiple clotheslines.  Our current rental has 3 sets of clotheslines. Sure, there are a few of the more affluent gringos that have dryers, but most get along fine without one. Even if I wanted to buy a dryer here, it would likely cost double the price than I would get it for in the United States. Electronics and appliances are very expensive here. I’m not getting a dryer anytime soon.

Overall, I feel very good about letting my clothes line-dry. I’m saving energy, harnessing the power of the sun, and saving some money while I’m at it. Those are all very good things. Plus, drying my clothes on a line really is no big deal. Most things dry pretty quickly. And with 5 people in our family, we have to keep up with the laundry anyway.

But diapers are another story. I’m using nice, plush prefolds with 8 layers of fabric. They take quite some time to dry! Drying clothes wasn’t a problem in the dry season. Up until May, I could leave clothes hanging on the uncovered clothesline overnight, with no fear of rain. And with the incredibly dry air, my clothes would dry fast anyway. But B was born at the beginning of May, just in time for the rainy season. Not only has the general humidity gone up, but we now can expect almost daily rainstorms that come by 2-3 pm on most days. This complicates diaper drying significantly. I have one uncovered clothesline area, pictured above, that catches the sun. Even if I wash the diapers at 7 am and have them out by 8 in the hot morning sun, they are usually still not completely dry by the time the rains roll in. Then I have to take them all down and move them to one of the other 2 covered clotheslines for further drying.  Then they are usually dry by the next morning, as the humidity that comes with afternoon rains further delays drying.

Many days I don’t get the diapers up until 10am or so. It’s hard to be regimented about things when you are up all night nursing a baby. So on those days, I don’t even bother with the direct sun. I just hang the dipes right under a covered area. Thankfully, they still usually dry by the next morning. But no matter how you cut it, half my diaper stash is out of commission each day. Which means that I basically have to wash a load of diapers every single day. Takes some time, I tell ya. Much different than what I did back in the states (wash and dry in a dryer in under 2 hours).

Regardless of the effort, I remind myself of these things:

• By harnessing the sun’s power, I’m helping the world a little every day.
• Diapers and clothes smell fantastic when they are sun or air-dried.
• I can’t afford a dryer anyway, so I might as well make the best of things!

(Thanks to www.Strocel.com for the idea for this post).

So today I read an article in one of my favorite blogs, The True Face of Birth, entitled Is Brown the New Green? Good timing. I’m particularly loving the link she provides to this blog. If we can all aspire to being Brown, than maybe our world just might survive.

In honor of the brown, a quote from George Costanza:

So, anyway, if you think about it, manure is not really that bad a word. I mean, it’s ‘newer’, which is good, and a ‘ma’ in front of it, which is also good. Ma-newer.

But back to serious matters. Nestled along the Hudson River, just 24 miles from New York City, Indian Point is an aging nuclear power plant that is not being operated safely. That place scares the hell out of me because I live right on the edge of the “Peak Fatality Zone“. Not to mention the 20 million people (including all of New York City) who live within the “Peak Injury Zone”. I guess it’s a gamble whether I’d be dead or injured in the event that Indian Point Explodes. And there seems to be no decent evacuation plan. But even if it doesn’t explode, it is leaking radioactive waste into the Hudson River as we speak. It really makes me sad that the Hudson River, which Pete Seeger helped to clean up in the late ’60′s and early ’70′s, is now being damaged by a new foe. But as old as Pete is, he just keeps fighting for this beautiful place.

At the benefit the other night, we heard Pete Seeger do some older songs (including Woody Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land, and the spiritual Down By the Riverside). One really special treat was hearing Pete and Tao do Guantanamera together. Hearing Pete sing in Spanish is nice, but he isn’t a native speaker. Hearing Tao sing Guantanamera in Spanish was something else. Still, I don’t have a video of Tao doing it, so here’s an old one of Pete:

For those that don’t speak Spanish, here is the English Translation of the song, based on a poem, “Versos Sencillos”, by Jose Marti.I am a sincere man
From where the palm tree grows
And before dying I want
To share the verses of my soul.Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

My verse is light green
And it is flaming crimson
My verse is a wounded deer
Who seeks refuge on the mountain.

Guantanamera, guajira, Guantanamera

I cultivate a white rose
In July as in January
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his honest hand.

Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

And for the cruel one
who would tear out this heart with which I live
I do not cultivate nettles nor thistles
I cultivate a white rose

Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

With the poor people of the earth
I want to share my good fortune
The brook of the mountains
Gives me more pleasure than the sea

Guantanamera, guajira Guantanamera

The farm is a family-owned farm and they were nice enough to invite us for a farm tour the other day. We got a look at where our food comes from, and it was a great learning experience for us and the kids. It was a beautiful day to be out in farmland too.

The first time we joined a CSA several years ago we were concerned about getting vegetables we didn’t want or know about. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise because we had veggies that we HAD to eat. We figured out what to do with them, getting some help from the magazine Everyday Food which always had recipes involving in-season produce. We had shorter trips to the grocery store too, and spent less money overall. We learned about some great veggies, learned some new recipes and we’ve been firm believers in CSAs since.

As you can see, all J needs is a fresh string bean to make her happy. This girl is really into fresh food, much more so than M. She’ll run to the table if we tell her broccoli is on the menu. M likes veggies too, just not to the same extent as J. She seems perfectly happy with fresh, whole foods (though all bets are off if a bag of potato chips materialize).

What we noticed immediately about the farm was the dirt – it was DARK. Adina, our host and guide, explained that ages ago their farm had been at the bottom of a lake (we were surrounded by mountains in all distances). All sorts of material decomposed to create the beautiful, black dirt. They also find fossils and arrowheads periodically – how cool is that?!

Here we are with Adina, standing in one of the roads the tractors take. To the left is corn ready for harvesting. We got to pick some and eat it right there – and it was SWEET. We learned last summer that corn starts losing sugars the second it gets picked, so there’s nothing better than freshly picked corn. J chowed down on 2 ears immediately.

We were then joined by Adina’s MIL Doris, who moved to the farm after marrying Frank (whose father started the farm in 1939). She is a gregarious woman whose love for the farm is utterly infectious. She also said that the baby corn they had was not the same species that is commonly used for Asian cuisine but that it tasted just as good. Trish can confirm that was true.

Another interesting fact was that they had several plantings of corn, all at different stages of growth. This allowed them to have a supply of corn to sell throughout the summer. I’ve always had this idea that people plant One Big Crop resulting in One Big Harvest when people work night and day to harvest the crop. I only know of farms through books or the media, so while it may be true for a monoculture farm, it’s not the case here.

Food we’ve gotten so far includes green beans, corn, popcorn, a variety of lettuce, arugula,tatsoi, bok choi, swiss chard, potatoes, beets. carrots, radishes, white turnips, garlic & garlic scapes (the garlic greens, which can be easily substituted for garlic), shallots and their greens, shell & sugar snap peas, spinach and kirby cucumbers.

We also got a sneak preview of what to look forward to, the highlights being heirloom tomatoes and artichokes.

Touring the farm was great for us and the kids and it does inspire us to farm. I don’t think I want to make a living at farming, but I’d love to grow the food we eat.

Here are our upcoming heirloom tomatoes, with a field of beautiful black dirt. You can see a tractor way in the back. On a windy day, the bamboo stakes whistle sweetly.

A field of onions. (I think)

M running next to the Field of Onions. You can see a couple of other crop in the distance, as well as the mountains. The bushy stuff to the left of the track is basil. It smelled wonderful, and we picked some to use for dinner that night.

Two crops of corn – the one on the right with the pollen is almost ready, the next batch after the ones we got to pick earlier. Doris told us that each hair in an ear goes to exactly one kernel. I’d never paid attention to that before. Corn can also self-pollinate, which must make it a relatively easy crop to grow.

Ah dirt. Every child should have the opportunity to wallow in it.

Behold a baby radish!

J didn’t have the same energy as M, who ran a LOT.

My hot patootie