Their work is both well regarded and quite beautiful, not at all what you would expect from washed-up junk. It may be a testament to an imagined, pristine world and belies their ability to tell a great story.

Take the pink flamingo, the tacky lawn trinket. The Langs found a head of one and were inspired to trace the roots of the once ubiquitous plastic bird. Union Plastics alone sold 20 million of them. People went nuts for the things, the Langs surmise, due to a 50s romance with retirement in Florida.

Plastic lasts forever.

Did you know that Crayola LLC introduced pink flamingo as a color in 1998? Have you heard of Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, whose gambling palace hotel “Flamingo” pretty well marked his life and death as well as the invention of the city of Las Vegas?

These are the seeds of rich storytelling, the kind to seduce even the most vociferous “anti-environmentalist” or apathetic teenager to want to follow the real story behind Beach Plastic.

Here’s the deep truth: 10% of the trash found on beaches is a nurdle. As cute as it sounds, a nurdle is more chemical monster than cartoon character, and it lives in one form or another forever. It is the pre-production, 5mm plastic pellet used in manufacturing and packaging.

The nurdle is the precursor to all the toothbrushes, disposable lighters, plastic bags, and water bottles that we throw away.

“Throw it away …Where is ‘Away’?” Richard asks. (The Langs actually sort by color and store all of their finds.) “If you do only one thing, never buy a plastic bottle of water again.”

I am reminded of the great discovery guru, the late Richard Feynman. He taught why merely knowing the name of something (“pink flamingo”, “plastic”) is the same as not knowing anything at all about it. This is an idea that is also close to our hearts. At Canogle we are working to make earth stewards out of more people by inspiring deeper knowledge of and a connection to our natural environment.

To learn about nurdles:

Dr. Hideshige Takada, environmental geochemist from Tokyo University, analyzed the nurdles the Langs collected from Kehoe Beach. To learn more about his important work and how to collect nurdles for his study:
http://www.tuat.ac.jp/~gaia/ipw/index.html

First-in-the-nation enforcement effort to eliminate the discharge of pre-production plastic into the waters of California
http://www.epa.gov/region9/mediacenter/nurdle-plastic-pellets/

Environmental Defense Fund, Sustainable Conservation, The Nature Conservancy, Sierra Nevada Conservancy and others are collaborating to develop tools to measure the environmental outcomes  of restoration.

More abundant plant life along a river, for example, could lead to healthier salmon populations. It goes to reason that as industry benefits from more, healthier fish they will pay for improvements. The core group will seek public and private investors once certain of the tools to measure the environmental benefits.

Canogle is very excited to be working with the group to publish information about efforts to restore and protect this important watershed.

Water doesn't come from the tap.

The Mokelumne River is essential to the health of the entire San Francisco Bay Area and a part of the vast Sierra Nevada system that supplies 60% of California’s water. It journeys from the Sierra Crest through forests, mountain meadows, and tributaries and streams, through the delta and into the San Francisco Bay, providing water for 700,000 acres of farmland in the Central Valley, 1.3 million people in the East Bay; and hydroelectric power to 215,000 homes. Over 300 species of mammals, amphibians, and birds make their homes in the watershed, each integral to the whole health of the ecosystem.

Our mission is to get critical information like this into the hands of everyday people via their handheld devices, and to inspire broader stewardship of the earth.

I’ve never been much for writing, but I’m moved by our New Year-New Website milestone to share a bit about this journey we’re on. It all started with a hunch, the idea that if the everyday person developed a stronger relationship to the natural environment he would be more likely to take care of it. We’ve since set out to create a new generation of earth stewards by developing the technology to make it easier, more entertaining, and rewarding for people to learn about the unique characteristics and treasures around them, whether found along a park trail or while walking in the neighborhood.

We asked ourselves, what would it be like if more of us experienced nature “like a local”? What if we knew more about the other life forms that share this blue-green planet with us? We are on a mission to find out.

Of course we’re not the first to think in this way, which is great news. We’re fortunate to be working with fellow citizens who take care of our parks and open spaces every single day. They are the people at land trusts, park district offices, environmental organizations and place-based business. As passionate and committed stewards of the planet, they help keep our world vibrant and verdant and through a practice called interpretation have been connecting people to places for a long time. The National Parks Service defines interpretation as “providing each visitor with an opportunity to personally connect with a place”. It is truly an art and we’re committed that it be widely appreciate as such.

Canogle is the first large-scale web technology platform that organizations and others may use to publish interpretive content and “push” it directly to their audience members via mobile devices. We call it geographic content, or geocontent, defined as information that is valuable to an audience based on their precise location. It includes articles, audio, video, illustrations and more, to illuminate that point of interest by various writers, videographers, photographers, and artists.

Our success will be measured by how much good will we engender in our customers. We are committed to providing solutions that are so valuable to them that they cannot stop talking about us, causing a ripple effect of steward-making.

Here’s to an amazing ride!

Arthur Bart-Williams, January 2012