Weeks 38-41: Did plastic save my life?

As some of you already know, I was in a pretty scary car accident at 10:00 pm on Monday night. I was coming back from an amazing dinner at my favorite restaurant, Tippy's in Governor's Harbor. I was with 3 friends and I was driving until my newly permitted friend asked if she could drive from Rock Sound market to the Cape. I allowed her to do so not realizing that 10 minutes later, she would be undergoing an advanced skill: safely coming out of a hydroplane. Alas, after two severe over corrections with the steering wheel, I found myself hanging upside down and slightly unconscious. I could hear everyone calling my name and trying my darndest to say that I was OK, but the speech part of my brain had temporarily checked out.

My friend unclipped me and I vaguely remember crawling out of the rear window onto the ground. 2-3 cars passed us. I vomitted up what was a lovely dinner of ribs and potatoes. Fare the well blessed pig dinner. I felt much more alert after that, but definitely not all there. The police came before the virtually non-existant emergency services.

So, what does this have to do with the blog? Here are the plastic components that contributed to my incident:

1. The car, which a friend told me that Found On Roadside Dead, Fix Often Repair Daily are 2 acronyms for Ford. I'm not sure what percentage of this 1990 Ford Explorer was plastic, but I can tell you that I had more than a few premonitions about this car. I should have trusted the bad ju-ju instinct. Do you remember the little red & yellow Fisher-Price cars with the black steering wheel? Yeah, that was our car.
2. seatbelt--allowed me the luxury of hanging upside down securely
3. sunglasses--either protected or contributed to my severe head bang
   
4. iPhone--enabled us to call for help and stay in communication with the Island School medical staff for updates.
   
5. Bic pen--allowed the police officer to start filling out a police report before checking to see of anyone was severely injured. I still want to hit that guy. I should have puked on his shoes.
   
6. chair--allowed me to sit down while the doc to took my vitals
   
7. stethescope, eye light thingy, blood pressure cuff--vital signs
8. Bic pen--allowed the doctor to fill out a report
9. toothbrush--allowed me to clean my mouth out after the token "I have a concussion" vomit.

So, did plastic save my life or did (does) it enable me to engage in more risky activities such as driving a vehicle? I realize that plastic, in many ways, has improved the safety of driving, but hasn't it also enabled vehicles to be produced more "economically" and therefore more abundantly, leading to a greater accessibility to people all over the world even in places such as Eleuthera with virtually NO emergency services or advanced life support systems?

I don't know what I'm getting at...maybe this is mild brain damage, but does plastic give us the illusion of safety?

Whatever the case, I am thankful to be alive to write another post.

Thanks for all of your well wishes...I am also thankful for all the amazing people and relationships in my life--thank goodness relationships, life, and love are NOT made of plastic.

Weird. See the infamous explorer in the background? I took this photo not too long after my premonition about this vehicle...self portrait inside my polyplastic tent on a solo camping trip in Rainbow Bay.

Weeks 31-37: An Ear for Plastic

I buy earrings. It's a fact. I won't stop. It is my one simple vice and I take great pride in this indulgence. So Josh and I are tooling around Gregory Town and we stop in Island Made--a well known gift store in Eleuthera just off of Queen's Highway. There are maps, "I brake for potcakes" T-shirts, Bahamas shot glasses made in China, sea glass & coconut earrings galore and then I see them...Sea Plastic earrings made in Eleuthera (as there is an abundance of plastic tids & bits everywhere) by a woman named Deanna Delvechio. If she's reading this and I spelled her name wrong, hopefully she will chime in! Here's what she has printed on the back of the paper:

"On the beaches in the Bahamas,
all sorts of treasures wash ashore.

From its former life aboard
ships of all sizes,
sea plastic is carried along
by ocean currents,
until it is deposited on our sands
like multi-colored confetti.

Sea plastic jewelry helps
keep our beaches clean
by recycling materials that
wash up on local shores.

Each piece of sea plastic collected
is unique,
and so is this piece of jewelry.
Enjoy it!"
seaplastic@gmail.com

Weeks 28-30: Leave a Trace

Two weeks ago, I had the honor of going to Jacks Bay on a community outreach with the Island School and Deep Creek Middle School students. I was asked to come along because of my interest in plastics and I jumped at the opportunity. The activity involved splitting up into groups of 2-3 and combing the beach for plastics. With their collections, the students built either something “practical” or “ornamental” in 15 minutes. Once the creations were completed, I or Professor D was hailed to document their creations through video. We then took photographs of the deconstruction of their creations. As Dr. D said, “it’s kind of like a twisted version of the Leave No Trace." Most students enjoyed taking everything apart, but a few felt a little moral twitch about throwing the trash back on the beach.

Plastigirl was my first subject. She was made from various 5-gallon bucket pieces, a shampoo bottle right arm and a soda bottle left arm, polypro rope & netting legs and a broken barrel stomach in which you could see her stomach contents. If anyone exhibits the cliché, “you are what you eat”, its Plastigirl. Her stomach was filled with more polypro rope, zip ties, a fancy shampoo bottle cap, and part of an ice cream tub.
Then came Mr. Person. Mr. was a simple man, with an F-style jug head, bottle cap eyes & nose, and a glow stick mouth…I feel a reprise of “Frosty the Snowman” coming on. Homemade funnel ears, bucket piece arms & legs, and a plastic necktie made from heaven only knows what.
The next group created a game. There were 3 containers each with different diameter openings and the object was to get various plastic scraps into the containers, with the smaller bottle openings earning more points than the larger ones.

And then there was the waterfall made from 2 broken pieces of the same lawn chair delicately balanced on the bottom half of an olive oil jug. Minimalist, balanced, thoughtful, and oh-so-versatile (they informed me that you didn’t have to send water down the fall…you could send sand, marbles, ducklings, or whatever gravity would allow). It also travels well.

I then journeyed down the beach to Plasti-city. This city didn’t have much, but it had the essentials: a baseball field and a place to wash your hair. As you can see from the photo, there was plenty of netting to catch fly balls.

Another group created a plastic dog and put it in a cage (because it was being a bad dog). I didn’t have the heart to tell them that wiener dogs don’t always make the best pets.
Anyway, when Dr. D asked them to deconstruct their creation, the students were a bit hesitant. “You mean, you want us to put everything BACK on the beach and in the bushes? Shouldn’t we have a trash can for all of it?” “Nope,” said Dr. D, “I want you to leave everything exactly as you found it.”

So, it got me thinking about deconstruction and the book Cradle to Cradle by Bill McDonough & Michael Braungart. How do we take from the earth with the intention of returning it back in the same shape & form we found it? Why is it taking us so long to turn this shipwreck of a mentality around?

In my dream vacation, I am walking along a beautifully polluted beach with the CEO’s of Sysco, Mattel, Solo, American Plastics, McDonald’s, and all the others. We have a few drinks and we talk about the cradle to grave mentality that has lead to the state of this beach. We talk about this beach and all others that are the proverbial backside of industrial processes. We start out using limited materials from the earth, tinker them into the unnatural, tout their value to the masses, convince ourselves that we cannot possibly survive without Barbie knee pads, then proceed to convince ourselves that we cannot possibly live WITH the Barbie knee pads, dispose of them through a number of ways, and boom…Malibu Beach Barbie. And the earth knows nothing about how to digest Barbie knee pads. So, we talk about how to make our stuff digestible for the earth since these CEO’s & their companies will eventually be responsible for their product when the customer is “done” with it. I know…it’s kind of an intense dream vacation, but we must be dreaming if we think our stuff just disappears into the earth. And there is no vacation from our waste stream.

Can we start tracing our stuff back to its rightful owners; these companies that use their own version of Leave No Trace? Is there a trace of responsibility, ownership, or forethought into the final resting place of their processes or product?

Weeks 24-27: Message in a plastic bottle

Has anyone seen my shoe? It was just here a second ago...
It must be on a beach somewhere in Eleuthera: the lost shoe capital of the world.

This has been the fastest month of my life. I didn't realize that repeatedly saying "I need to do my blog post tomorrow" would actually turn out to be 30 days from the last post.

Anyway, last weekend I took a day off and went to Lighthouse Beach at the southern tip and did some spontaneous beach combing. And do you know what I found? Combs...on the beach. Very surreal. I spotted at least two of them. Here is everything else I found...

• baby doll carcass
  
• baby doll head (found a few hundred yards away)
  
• 10+ 5-gallon buckets (2 from Chevron)
  
• Barbie knee pad
• 3 hard hats (red, white & blue)
• unknown tube container things (5' long/8" diameter)
• polypro rope & netting of every thickness, length, & color
• thermoses
• coolers
• laundry baskets
• high heel shoe
• HDPE pipe
  
• Haitian butter tubs
• cherub
• irrigation tubing
  
• chair back
• half of a lawn chair
• milk crates
• cable insulation
  
• bread crates
• buoys
  
• unknown piece of plastic- "Made in Maine"
• flip flops
• snorkel fins
• running shoes
• welding mask
• soda bottles
• olive oil jugs
  
• a Hatian prison tray
• fishing line
• computer board sandwiched between polystyrene (3 of them)
  

The whole beach combing experience is what I would call comically apocalyptic...or maybe apocalyptically comical. It looked almost intentional. Like someone strategically and delicately scattered all of these objects evenly on the beach. I remember looking for shells and shark teeth when I was younger and now I am a scavenger of plastic. Finding a plastic object on the beach 15 years ago was kind of a unique find. Now, plastic is part of our landscape. And by "our", I mean everyone in the whole wide world. My guess is that many if not most children have never seen an unpolluted beach.

The beach is my refuge--my place of release, solitude, and transformation. It is also the proverbial rug of the world under which we sweep everything. The places that I hold most sacred are just not what they used to be. So, how do I come from this despair?

I have no idea. So, I just started mining the beach.

I brought back 3 bread crates, a giant drum (a future worm bin for composting), the welding mask, 2 of the buckets, and the barbie knee pad. The most useful of which is...that's right, the barbie knee pad. It's great for all my sweet dance moves.

My new version of Message in a (plastic) bottle:

Just a castaway, a bucket lost at sea, oh
Another lonely day, with plastic around me, oh
More polypro than any man could bear
Rescue me before I fall into despair, oh

A year has passed since I lost my crate
But I should have known this right from the start
Only rope can keep it together
Plastic can help your life but
it can break apart

Walked out this morning, don't believe what I saw
Hundred billion flip flops washed up on the shore
Seems I'm not alone in losing my freight
Hundred billion unmatched shoes, looking for a mate...

I'll send an SOS to the world
I'll send an SOS to the world...

What's on your beach?

Week 22/23: Dancing with the Devil

Surrounded by tropical beauty in the tapered off winter sun, I pretend to know something about plumbing. PVC, in all of it’s value-ridden evil comes calling again. Team Aquaponics (aka, Patrick & Sunnye) begin to plumb in the first phase of new tanks for the tilapia expansion. Recirculating the additional 3,000 gallons of water through this system requires about 300 feet of 2” pipe with a grab bag of valves & couplings just for kicks. And we drizzle all the end bits with cleaner and PVC cement (Aka, cancer on a stick).

We have 4 other tanks to plum (3,000 more gallons) and new grow bed space to create and connect to eventually. This will employ the use of an additional 850 feet of polyvinyl cancer. This is all ballpark, of course...

As I was fiddling with the PVC snow left over from the pipe cutting, I asked Patrick, “How can something so helpful be equally as toxic?” This PVC is absolutely vital in keeping these 1600 or so tilapia jumping and the grow beds popping. Considering the fact that construction accounts for 75 % of PVC use and the pipes account for 50% of the PVC production in the US (even though we’re talking about the Bahamas right now).

What would this place be like without PVC? There is only one person to ask...the sultan of systems, prince of plumbing, cistern czar, maharishi of maintenance, ruler of repair, and capitán of construction. If this man had a blog, it would be called “knoweverything.blogspot.com”. He is a walking library of knowledge and experience. And on a precious day off, he granted me an interview AND shared his carrots. What a guy.

What is your official title?
Director of Facilities

What do you oversee at the Island School/Cape Eleuthera Institute?
All the power & water systems, vehicles & boats, overseer of IT, Biodeisel, wood shop, “bush mechanics”, waste management, repairs & maintenance, supply orders, hiring for operations positions, research tech advisor for aquaponics & aquaculture, project manager for new construction & basically just making sure the technical aspect of this place runs smoothly.

What would this place be like without PVC?
No indoor plumbing, no hot & cold running water & working toilets. No wet lab or hatchery, no aquaponics, no indoor electricity b/c the wires are run through PVC conduit.

What are the top 5 plastics make your job (and not to mention Island School life) possible?
1. Plastic windshields in the airplanes that bring everything over here.
2. Food packaging because hardly anything here is grown locally.
3. Casing for all computers & electronics that make communication with the outside world possible.
4. Plastic that covers all the plumbing & the drains that transport all of our potable water.
5. Insulation on the wire that provides all of our electricity—so no lights, communication, or refrigeration.

How many feet of PVC do you think runs through IS/CEI…roughly?
• 500 in the well field (2 miles from campus)--the piping that runs to campus id HDPE.
• 5000 feet for CEI & Island School
• 1000-1200 feet (pump, drain, & air blower line)
(But the seawater in-take system and where the water pumps into the wet lab is HDPE.)

From where is most of the PVC sourced?
JM Eagle in Nassau--a subsidiary of a US corp.
So we’re not paying duty on the pipe since it’s manufactured here in the Bahamas. And, alas, we have a budget, so...actually… I think it’s 350 BTUs per ton per mile to get things here by ship. (This is the part where Geoff walks away and grabs the book Let my People go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard) Yeah, it’s 400 BTU’s for ships, 3,300 BTU’s per ton for truck freight, air cargo uses 21,670 to move a ton of goods a mile.

What other feasible options do we have for PVC?
Aquatherm is used at CEI. It’s an Polypropylene alternative to PVC and it costs 4 times as much. There’s PVC in certain places, but most of it is PT—in the dorms & offices, but not in the wet lab, but it’s a mix of both PVC & PT in the dry lab.
PVC is a catch 22 and it’s a material that doesn’t really jive with our mission, but the alternatives are limited and we do what we can. Not much PVC gets wasted around here—even if you take it to the dump, people come and pick through the mess to salvage.

There it is folks. Any thoughts? This week has beat me down. I'm brain dead and as our resident shark guru, Edd Brooks says... "I'm tired."

Week 21: Plastiponics

Yeah. So, I’m in the Bahamas. Life is tough sometimes. I have been here for about 9 days and I already feel like I’ve been here for a year. I don’t even think I realize how much I am learning each day. My internship here is focused on aquaponics. In a nutshell, aquaponics is a synergistic recirculating system between (in this case) aquaculture of Nile tilapia, Oreochromis niloticus and the hydro culture of leafy greens & herbs. We’ve got 6 different stages of tilapia from little fry to 3-5 pounders as well as a brood stock, or as I like to call it: Big Mamas tank. We’ve got a settling basin, biofilter, and 10 grow beds.

Aquaponics has been around since the beginning of time, but modern aquaponics is quite possibly impossible without…wait for it…wait for it…PLASTIC. So, I’ll walk you through the system as best I can. Keep in mind that I am not an aquarist/culturist by training, or a plumber, or a biologist. So, forgive any mistakes. I’m doing this all from memory as I am in the lab right now AND I’ve only been here a week! That’s what the “comment” component of a blog is all about. I would love to get a holler from NEAq aquarists out there for some edits if you see any!

1. Let’s start with tilapia eggs. When it’s time for the Big Mama tank to get some action, a few #2 plastic fuel jugs (cut in half) are placed in the fiberglass tank. We drop a couple of males in, magic happens, cut to eggs.
2. Since tilapia are mouth brooders (keeping the eggs in her mouth), there is a plastic device like nothing I’ve ever seen before to “assist” in gently getting the mama to cough up the goods, as it were. I’m not sure what this egg extruder device is made of, but my best guess would be Plexiglas with some combination of HDPE & PVC.
3. Skip to fry. So, we have a little nursery of infants, toddlers, tweens, & teens. The infants, toddlers & tweens share a fiberglass tank rigged with 2 plastic dividers, creating 3 tanks in one; each section being rigged with a removable “tray” made of polypropylene netting & PVC.
4. In the adult fiberglass tanks, there is PP netting spread over the tanks (they’re jumpers!)
5. The settling basin (aka, poop homestead), where a lot of the solids from the fish settle is covered with a heavy-duty tarp (not sure what kind of plastic) and tied down with PP rope. This is to keep algae from taking over & pigging out on all the oxygen.
6. The biofilter is filled with this mystery plastic ribbon, which provides surface area for other solids to bail out before entering the grow beds. I want to find out what kind of plastic this is…
7. Then off we go (about 15 feet of PVC later) to the grow beds. Behold—the miracle of growing plants without soil. Our Genovese basil, Speckled Amish Bibb and Jericho lettuces come into this world surrounded by a growth medium (rockwool or coir) in little black plastic seed pots.
8. These little black pots are then placed in large HDPE bread trays and watered daily via a plastic watering can or plastic-coated hose.
9. After a couple of weeks, the pots are placed in one of the hundreds of holes carved out in one of the 30 polystyrene rafts floating in the plastic-lined grow beds.
10. All of these tanks and beds are oxygenated with the help of clear tubing (LDPE, me thinks) and air stones. Does anyone know off hand, the material of the “stone”?
11. All of the tanks & beds have in flow & outflow PVC pipes.
12. And it goes without saying that this program was brought to you today by our sponsor, PVC pipes unlimited. PVC IS the circulatory system of aquaponics. PVC: the necessary evil.

And there you have it. With our 12-step program, you too can have your own aquaponics system. Stay tuned for next week’s posting about CEI’s zero waste initiative! I’m hoping to have some photos of that as well as the aquaponics system up soon.

I never thought I would say this, but…I kind of miss my tidy little plastic pile (errr...not to mention my family & friends!) Since I have been here, I have only collected a handful of plastic items. Living in community…definitely a good cure for the “single serve” mentality in which I usually find myself.

Under this star-littered Bahamian sky in the little town of Cape Eleuthera, I bid you farewell until the next post.

Week 19/20: Plastics Abroad

I have a good excuse for posting late. I've been packing my bags for a 5 month internship in the Bahamas. I'm not kidding. But I have a story to share before I get into that...

The Dentist. First of all, my dentist is pretty darn cool. She's got the most personable chair side manner and she's a whiz with the drill. Anyway, I mentioned the blog to her and that I would need to keep my rinse cup. Shortly thereafter, I realized that I had created a monster. Here is a conversation (inspired by true events) between dentist (D) and dental assistant (DA).

D: (to DA) "Hey, so we have to save everything plastic that we use here today because Sunnye is keeping all of her plastic for a year."

DA: (long suspicious pause) "Is this a joke?"

Sunnye: (chuckling sheepishly with numbed lower jaw) "Ith notha joke."

DA: "OK, that's just weird."

D: "Anyway, we have to keep everything we use on her that we would otherwise throw in the trash...so she can take it home with her."

DA: (now on board with the idea) "Ooooh--and we can put it all in her plastic headrest cover--it'll make a good baggie."
D: "Good idea."

Both roll their chairs to hover over Sunnye's mouth and continue their dialogue. Sunnye is reluctantly no longer able to participate in the conversation due to rapidly spinning dental tools on her teeth.

DA: "So, what is the blog about?"
D: "She gave us a card; it's right there on the counter, so we can look it up later."
DA: "But why is she doing it?"
D: "I told you! We have to just read it. Do you recycle?"
DA: "Only plastic bottles, but my mom recycles EVERYTHING."
D: (jokingly exasperated) "What are you, a polar bear hater?!"

(Sunnye chuckles & drools a little)

DA: "No!"
D: "Well, then you should recycle more. I'm always picking my husband's recyclables out of the trash. Then I ask if he hates polar bears and that always seems to get him."
DA: "We can give her the suction tubes too."
D: "Oh yeah, and we need to keep the brush tips and plastic barriers on the light."

After a quick filling, my dentist handed me a little doggie bag of plastics--about 15 items in total. And to think, I was feeling on top of things for remembering the rinse cup.
As I was leaving, she mentioned how cool it would be if I could come in and spend a day auditing their plastic consumption. This brings me back to my very first post. Where would the medical/dental world be without plastic?

Right. So, back to the Bahamas. I will be spending the next 5 months of my short life in Cape Eleuthera, Bahamas as an aquaponics intern for the Cape Eleuthera Institute. I am leaving tomorrow and will return June 15. The humorous serendipity of this whole thing is that the institute began a zero waste initiative on September 1--the same day I started my blog. When asked if I might be challenged by sharing an environment with my waste, a huge smile spread across my face. Phew...I guess this means I won't have to secretly stuff my plastic under the mattress.

It goes without saying that this blog will evolve a bit. I am guessing I won't have the time or the patience to post each week. The work week is 5.5 days and the internet connection is on "island time." I will still be collecting my plastic and I'm still working on the logistics of how to get it all back to Boston. Any bright ideas are welcomed. Since the institute is a community of shared resources, I am hoping that my individual plastic consumption will decrease, but who knows? I am excited to fill my brain and hands with all things aquaponics as well as permaculture, aquaculture, alternative energy, small island development, shark research, Island School student research projects, and maybe I'll have time to slip in a little half marathon or a 4 mile swim with the students...my new found winter weight will thank me for it. ; )