Inspiration from Abroad (how Hawaii keeps beaches clean)
Hawaii is a USA state in the Pacific Ocean, home to singer/songwriter Jack Johnson who with his wife, is heavily involved in local beach clean activities (they even invented a reusable pint cup to stop plastic waste).
The islands are home to Kona coffee, hula dances, volcanoes and the world’s highest mountain (not Everest, this is higher if you include underwater ones).
But plastic waste (and wildfires due to climate change) means these six major islands have really taken a serious approach to reducing carbon emissions and beach litter, for residents, tourists (a major income) and marine creatures.
There are tap water refill stations across the island, along with marine trash identification lesson plans, to get the next generation involved in helping to keeping the island clean for future generations.
Get involved in your own volunteer beach cleans.
Why so much rubbish collects in Hawaii
Most of the world’s discarded rubbish collects 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).
Due to so many active volcanoes, some have asked why Hawaii does not use the heat for energy. But experts say this would not work, as volcanoes are unpredictable – collecting it 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).
Reducing the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
Near to Hawaii, this is 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. The government has also mandated that all cesspools be replaced by 2025, to improve water quality and beach sanitation.
After legislating for the single-use plastic ban, President Trump has reversed it saying that ‘paper straws don’t work’. So now Americans will be able to buy, use and litter plastic straws all over again, after such a fight to rid the world of them.
Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii
Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii is a local organisation dedicated to cleaning up the coastline, and keeping it that way. It offers:
Private and corporate clean-ups, for local communities and businesses to get involved. They offer a fun way to get outsides, while creating a positive impact that leaves participants inspired. Can you imagine if the same happened in England, say on mass-littered beaches such as Skegness, Margate and Formby?
Why are councils and companies in these towns not organising outings for locals to go pick up litter, and get involved in bettering their communities, with lots of incentives (say reusable mugs and bottles, and a free lunch out?)
In Hawaii, all the clean-up supplies are included. Plus each event receives a post-impact report, which the council or community or company can then post up on their website and social media. The USA annual clean-up has an annual report. As well as finding all the usual rubbish (glass, plastic etc), it also has found:
- 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
(Re)learning programmes
These are mostly for schools but could also be for communities. Often when people drop litter, it’s because they actually don’t think about where it goes. Not realising that cigarettes and cotton buds etc, slip through sewage systems and go into the sea (as do condoms, baby wipes and plastic tampons and pads, if flushed down the loo).
Here, local environmental experts give classes for free, to teach young people reasons not to drop litter, and what happens to it, when it breaks into microplastics and ends up in the sea. Once they know, it’s far less likely that they’ll be littering bottles and cans everywhere.
Before recycling cans, rinse/remove lids (pop ring-pulls over holes). Then step on the top to ‘pinch’ inner rims together, to avoid wildlife getting trapped.
Plus at the end of the teachings, they are given some litter-picking tools to participate in a fun safe litter-picking expedition on a local beach, before they go home. To put their new theory into practice!
Resource Recovery
This program puts all the waste recovered back into use as something else! For instance, Circular & Co Coffee Cups are made from waste collected by Waterhaul projects, one purchase designed to last for years. In Hawaii, food scraps are made into compost, other items are recycled, and what’s left is trashed safely (not ideal, but better than littering local beaches and safer for fish and marine creatures).
The organisation was founded by eight friends in someone’s house, and now has become a worldwide pioneer to inspire anyone with litter clean-ups on local beaches. Here are some strange items that each member has found on Hawaiian beaches:
- 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
- Chief executive Rafael won’t even say, answering ‘let us never speak of them again?!)
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.
