Inspiration from Hawaii: beach cleans, environmental education
Hawaii is a beautiful island just off the coast of the USA, known for its beautiful beaches, turquoise water, volcanic landscapes and rich marine life. But keeping the beaches clean is very complicated.
Due to most of the world’s discarded rubbish collecting into one massive mound in the North Pacific, bound by the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. It’s divided into the eastern garbage patch (between Hawaii and California) and the western garbage patch (near Japan).
Hawaii Wildlife Fund estimates that 15 to 20 tones of marine trashed are washed up on the island’s shores each year, most of which are plastic. Kamilo Beach (on Big Island) is now listed as the most plastic-polluted place on earth, with over 47 tons of plastic removed from the shore in just 24 days.
On one volunteer beach clean, one find was an endangered Hawaiian monk seal, who had netting wrapped tightly around her neck). Another local monk seal died, after becoming entangled from ‘jug fishing’ (when someone lowers a plastic jug to try to catch a fish).
Near to Hawaii is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling current of rubbish that is apparently the size of Texas. Hawaii’s island accumulate a lot of marine debris from the north side, including thousands of pounds of plastic, fishing gear and consumer litter that wash up on the windward coasts.
Despite Hawaii’s best efforts, Kamilo Beach on Big Island is one of the most littered areas on earth, due to ocean currents washing up plastic waste. Locals say it’s not unusual to see the ocean filled with confetti-like plastic pieces’, and someone once came across hundreds of coat hangers in one go.
It’s so bad, that local hotels even offer free nights for tourists, who get involved in volunteer beach clean-ups. However the islanders have been very quick to come up with unique initiatives to help keep their beautiful islands clean, and there are a lot of wonderful ideas that we could use in England (or elsewhere).
Regular beach clean-ups make a visible difference
One of the simplest ways to keep beaches clean is of course to get involved in volunteer beach-clean-ups.These are best done as part of a planned event, in order to keep safe with tides, and you will be provided with safety equipment like sharps boxes and special knives for cutting fishing waste away from rocks etc.
If you see a beach littered with rubbish, know that it is not always due to local people dropping litter. Often it can be swept onto your beach from other places, even from abroad. Another reason to avoid dropping litter on the beach.
Volunteer beach cleans do far more than just remove rubbish to recycle or safely bin. They also:
- Remove plastic before it reaches the ocean (where it breaks down into microplastics to be accidentally ingested by fish, seabirds and marine life).
- Reduce choking hazards for all wildlife (from nesting birds to seals)
- Make the beaches nicer to visit, so increases tourism income
- Raises local awareness of marine pollution
- Gives communities a practical and fun way to work together
Communities take part to protect the coast
You could imagine that if you lived in Hawaii, you’d likely be a pretty relaxed person! So it’s nice for lots of chilled out people to get together and foster a real community spirit to preserve the ocean.
Two volunteers who are heavily involved in keeping Hawaii’s beaches clean are local residents Jack Johnson (the singer) and his wife. They have even invented a reusable ‘steel pint cup’ for people to buy, to help reduce the use of plastic disposable cups near the beach.
There’s something really wonderful about communities spending the day removing the trash from their coastlines, and going home knowing they have made the oceans safer for the marine creatures that share their beautiful islands.
Hawaii’s ‘leave no trace’ mindset
You will never find a Hawaiian dropping a glass bottle, an aluminium can or a cigarette butt on the beach. Everyone here takes their rubbish to a public bin or home for recycling/disposal. They even use portable ashtrays to extinguish cigarette butts, and keep them safe until they find a bin.
Everyone in Hawaii uses reusable water bottles and reusable lunch boxes, and avoids unnecessary packaging. As a result, the islanders protect their coral reefs, sand dunes, rocky shoreslines, wetlands and marine habitats.
Hawaiians know and appreciate marine life
The beach is not just the sea. It’s home to seabirds, seals (and their pups) and many different forms of marine life that often nobody sees. But because Hawaiians are so in tune with the natural world, they go out of their way to protect.
For example, they never walk on sand dunes (home to nesting birds, amphibians, reptiles and seals hiding pups). They don’t remove coastal flowers and they never disturb any marine wildlife (for instance, they don’t use jet skis that can drive a wedge through the water and separate parents from their young).
On the water, Hawaiians are sustainable sailors in every way!
Local schools and business help too
Many local schools and businesses in Hawaii get involved in beach clean-ups, and environmental education. Both use reusable packaging and have refill stations for water and other items.
Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii
Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii is a local organisation that offers ways for local communities and businesses to get involved. Could you imagine if the same happened on littered beaches in England (say Skegness, Margate and Formby?)
Locals who collect the most litter receive incentives, like reusable mugs and bottles, or even free lunch! Each clean-up event is followed by a post-impact report, so people can see what they have collectively removed from the local beaches. As well as finding all the usual rubbish (glass, plastic), other items found recently include:
- Cardboard boxes saying ‘please recycle this box’
- A nappy full of fruit
- Shopping carts in rivers
- Microwaves, fridges and TV sets
- Decades-old soda cans and vintage bottles
- Car parts and engines
- A live litter of puppies, who were all adopted to good homes
- A machete?
- A very expensive pair of Korean sunglasses
- A dead cockroach laying among microplastics
- A USA baseball helmet
- A damaged Barbie doll head
- A garden hose
- A vacuum cleaner
- A buoy from 1960
- A crate with mysterious writing
- Oyster spacers (these are tiny plastic straw-like tubes used in the oyster farming industry, that break apart into microplastics).
- Plastic eel trap cones also wash up frequently
- Chief executive Rafael won’t say what he once found, saying ‘let us never speak of them again?!)
(Re)learning programmes
Local children are educated on the perils of dropping litter on land or sea, and how small items like cigarette butts and cotton buds can slip through sewage systems and end up in the sea (as do condoms, baby wipes and plastic tampons/pads, if flushed down loos).
In Hawaii, local environmental groups give free glasses, to teach children about microplastics and sharp items, and how to prevent them ending up in the sea. After this, they are far less likely to litter.
To avoid trapping wildlife at landfills, rinse containers then pop ring-pulls back over cans (step on upper can to pinch rims together).
After clean-ups, much of the waste is reused into other items. This also happens in England, where ocean waste collected by volunteers is recycled into Circular & Co Coffee Cups.
Could Hawaii use volcanoes for free energy?
As you likely know, Hawaii is full of volcanoes. Some climate campaigners have wondered whether all this heat could be useful in providing free energy, to avoid fossil fuels.
The simple answer is no. Volcanoes are so unpredictable, that collecting the molten ash would be ‘the most dangerous job on earth’.
We’ll just look at you. If you look scared, then we’ll panic. Discovery Channel crew to volcanologist John Seach, while filming at a volcano
I have seen so many eruptions in the last 20 years, that I don’t care if I die tomorrow. Maurice Krafft (volcanologist on the day before he, his wife and another volcanologist were killed on Unzen Volcano, Japan).
