After an amazing day with 30 students from the Universidad de Limón, we decided to stay in Costa Rica for another week to get a deeper understanding about what is going on related to the plastic topic. We already knew Costa Rica has recently announced a pretty ambitious and innovative project for the next 4 years: to become the N° 1 country in the world with an integrative national strategy to eliminate single-use plastics!! We also knew there are many places that discourage plastic straws and shopping bags, as many travellers already told us back in Panama. But for a deeper understanding we planned to visit a turtle rescue centre, visit the planet conservation centre in Puerto Viejo and a very active dive centre where they organise regular clean ups to ask them what they thought about the situation.
But oh well... Traveling can sometimes really be about things getting together or... not at all! So the turtle centre was closed the entire month, we could find the website of the dive centre but there was no adress to call or visit and the Planet conservation centre did eventually respond but when we had the appointment it appeared to be far out of town and the taxi driver could hardly find it. When he finally did, the owners appeared to be in Germany and the volunteers did not have any awnsers about the plastic and recycling situation in Costa Rica.
In Bocas del Torro we went to a hostel owner who had worked together with many others to ban plastic bags from the islands for an interview. After the interview, we ended up taking him on a Litterati Cleanup and then he told us we should visit an organic farm on the hill. Two hours later we found ourselves at a self-sustainable farm that made everything themselves (so no packaging) and used all the plastic they could not avoid to make ecobricks and build things in their garden.
Next we had to run to get the boat to another island and ended the day with a cleanup with 15 kids and a couple of tourists who gathered 8 big bags full of registered pieces of trash. At the end of the day we were still surprised about the flow of the day and all the things we had experienced.
Surprise yourself and find out what you can accomplish just by starting anywhere. Invite somebody on the trashmap and go for a Litterati cleanup. Life will become magical!