The Kohala Center and Thoughts About Hawaiian Ingenuity

In this week's Honolulu Weekly, there's an article about The Kohala Center on Big Island. It talks about how the community on Big Island began to meet and have a community conversation about what they wanted to improve and change in their community. From these discussions the idea came that by focusing on the island as an educational resource (wait, stop--the entire island--as an educational resource), the island could improve youth education, skilled employment at better pay for locals, and economic diversity. All this without becoming a tourist mecca or industrial wasteland. In it's geological rarity, locational uniqueness, geographic isolation, and in it's path towards sustainability and self sufficiency, Big Island is made for research modeling. The amazing part of this intuitive leap of thought is that, in order to continue to be an intellectual commodity, the island must continue to bushwack an interesting and promising path through all of its inherent challenges. Its value as a model is enhanced by the community's ability to create and manifest its own ideals in an ecologically wise way. I absolutely love this.

Furthermore, here's a gem of a quote for Garbage Craft from Matthews Hamabata, the director of The Kohala Center, as quoted from a Honolulu Weekly article entitled, "Kohala Nui--Education, environment, and empowerment on the Big Island": "Wouldn't it be great if we didn't see waste as waste but rather as an input for the agricultural system or our build environment? Outputs of one industry could be the inputs of another. We would maximize efficiency for greater energy and food self-reliance, capture dollars, and keep them on the island and create jobs."

I have thought a lot about this subject, especially lately, as I do this blog. One thing that I envision is to make regular calls to yellow pages buisnesses and investigate what their garbage is like, whether it's something they are willing to part with (or if there are legal barriers, protocol barriers, or govt regulations preventing this sort of thing for specific buisnesses), and what could be creatively done with such products. A next step i see would be to have several standard garbage craft projects figured out. A third step would be to begin interacting with the community on a volunteer basis.

Two ways I picture doing this are 1) in schools, as a recycling education program/craft class and 2) working with poor populations--for instance, temporary housing communities, poverty safety-net programs. In the latter I could do something like startup a workers co-opt in the same way a program like Food Not Bombs is organized. The workers would form a company, they would figure out the interests they had and the kind of crafts they wanted to make, and then they would investigate a cast-offs based supply chain for getting these items. If it needed more structure than this, it might be possible to mentor for a series of craft classes/brainstorming sessions where we worked with certain goods and tried to think of useful creative applications.

Just going to the yellow pages from A-the very beginning of D, I see, and can get creatively excited about the potential refuse of: abrasives companies, acousticals, airbrush, air conditioners, aircraft equipt/ground support/rebuilding, welding and metal works, tailoring, dry cleaners, animal hospitals, appliance repair, aquarium supply stores, artificial limbs/eyes, bishop museum, auto repair, auto detail, bakeries, baloons, bamboo products, barbers, barrels and drums, bars, bathroom remodelijng, beauty salon, bicycle repair, billiard equiptment, binderies, blinds, boat repair, boilers, bowling, breweries, bridal shop, building supply, butcher, buttons, cakes, caligraphers, car wash, carnival equiptment, carpet llayer, ceiling cleaning, cement, ceramics, chairs and tables, chemist, child care, china and glassware, cigar dealer, clock repair, cctv,clowns,painters, coffee, compost, computer parts, concrete blocks, contact lenses, roofing, tree service, propane, copiers, cosmetics, costumes, countertops, country clubs, cruiseships, curtains, cushions, crystals, cutlery, dairy...and so on. I mean, what could I do with: castoff sandpaper or wire bristle brushes, leftover paint, metal ducts, spent airfilters, dog hair, broken stoves, aquarium glass and so on? A lot I imagine.

Kids could think of tons of things I'm sure. It would be like their favorite art class ever. Adults might take hints from the kids, or they might be given categories to think about and elaborate on...like garbage gardening, scrap welding, tinker tin work, glass art/craft, weaving, box making, rug making, shed building, garden ornament building, furniture repair/overhaul/crafting, mosaic making, composting, sign painting, dying, computer tech work, carving, etc. This is what I'm interested in. Kudos to Matthews Hamabata and his Center, for being of a like mindset. I am inspired by what Hawaii has the potential to become.

Garbage Crafting

I'm creating this blog as a place to be creative and rethink refuse in a myriad of ways. I've always had a fascination with trash and it's reuse, and I especially notice this urge in the workplace. I've worked a lot of jobs in my lifetime..the short list is:
Lemonade Stand Juicer
Aquaculture Researcher
Office Manager
Computer Programmer
Stage Hand
Sound Engineer
TV Station Master Controller
Photo Archives Scanner
Barista
Nursing Home Nurse's Assistant
Student
1-hour photo developer
Student photographer
Post-Katrina Volunteer
Substitute Teacher
Teacher
Data Entry Specialist
Personal Assistant
Raw Vegan Chef
Puppeteer
Pizza Deliverer
Artist
Writer
Editor
Maid
Labor-Ready employee

During a few of these jobs I have found myself at times, bored, with time on my hands, staring at the trash bin, and creatively musing. I don't know that most people could relate to this, but my fascination has yielded all kinds of work-junk related craft projects, and dreams of future craft projects. I was thinking about this one day while mentally breaking down the visual contents of our compost bin at my current workplace (a raw vegan kitchen), and decided it would be a really cool and absolutely important subject in which to generate collective interest. So in this blog I will be taking a look at my work junk, and also I will be talking to other workers about their junk. One project I am going to try is the challenge of using all the trash we generate in a week at my work, and making sellable crafts/foods/folk remedies/dyes/etc out of it's contents and see how much I generate. I would love to create a work-junk crafts co-op of some sort, where we meet once a week and workshop and trade around all the junk we create at work. And this is where we begin today.