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.

Zucchini Peels and Papaya Skins...

So I've brought home and 'processed' two bags from work since my last writing.
The contents of the two bags that I sorted out as being potentially useful were:
lettuce leftovers
papaya skins and seeds
apple seeds
onion roots
avocado peels
onion skins
lime rinds
lettuce heads
daikon slices
thyme
basil stalks
thyme stalks
carrot peels
banana peels

And here are the categories I sorted them into:
for use as a fabric dye
for medicinal/tea use
for use as a beauty concoction
future stew or sauce base
garbage garden participants
spice/seasoning rack

So I'm gradually amassing a large plastic bag full of onion skins and banana peels for a future dye project...and I'm collecting avocado peels for their use as a parasite cleansing medicinal tea...and I'm keeping the lime rinds until I get a grater and can grate them into a tiny jar and keep that for seasoning purposes (mm coconut milk curry)...the papaya skins are facial material, though I may grind them up soon and use them for a shampoo base...the carrot skins I blended up and use as a facial...the garbage garden will be made up of green onions, papayas, apple trees, and a lettuce head experiment (I'm gonna see if the lettuce heads will grow at all..kinda overly optimistic, I know)...I've already had great success with potting and growing the last batch of green onions, though the papayas from last time never sprouted....so this time I'm drying the seeds out on the porch before i plant them...this also makes them useful as peppercorn like seasoning, as in papaya seed dressing...mm.

Papaya Skins

So what to do with those papaya skins?? I saw a site that mentioned a papaya vinegar recipe for skin and hair care, where you cover the papaya fruit over with apple cider vinegar and use it as a skin or hair rinse after it's soaked in the vinegar for a few days. I've also found several sites extolling the benefits of papaya for skin care. One recommendation that sounded simple was to use the skin the same way another site advised that we use the mango skin--apply the fruit to your face using the peel as applicator, and then wait until the fruit dries to remove it, making a nice facial peel mask. I think I will rub my face with the papaya peels, just as recommended by some with the mango skins. Then I will chuck it in the tub for a relaxing, skin nourishing bath. For future reference, I found that the juice from pineapple skins are also sometimes used for a nourishing skin mask. Turns out Papaya is antibacterial and acne-fighting. It is also wound healing and is used a lot in serious wound care to remove dead skin cells, as well as in the healing of smaller bruises. Papaya can also get rid of age spots and freckles, as it has whitening agents. It is often used in baby food and food enzyme pills because it helps with digestion and proper production of digestive.

My other thought is, natural dyes. This is something I have a burgeoning interest in. I think I will begin to experiment with things like papaya as natural dyes. I've researched some of this, and what natural dyes need in order to stick to clothing is a fixative of some sort. The household varieties of this are table salt, vinegar, or alum (which you can find in the pickling spice section of the grocery store spice rack), though one site I found also recommended aluminum salt as a good fixative, and as I was brainstorming on how to obtain an aluminum salt other than alum, it occured to me that deodorant might be a prime example of this. I switched my run-of-the-mill deodorant/anti-perspirant out for Tom's deodorant recently because I heard how the aluminum salt in it is bad for your glands and skin. Fortunately, instead of chucking the old deodorant sticks I saved them in the back of a drawer somewhere. I think a natural dye experiment would be a great use for them.

The procedure for making a fixative is to dissolve the fixative in water, then dunk the fabric you are going to dye in the mixture using a stick or wooden spoon, then raise the water to boiling, and let the fabric simmer for 20 minutes. Then remove the fabric, wring it out, and place it immediately in the dye bath. Dye baths can be made from natural sources by wrapping the organic substances in cheesecloth, covering it with water, boiling until the color really comes out into the water enough to seem useful, then remove the cheesecloth wrapped items and dunk the fabric in the dye for as long as it takes to really soak into your cloth. Line dry.