The Next Generation of Zero Waste: How Recycle Hawaiʻi, Mālama ʻĀina Compostables, and Kaʻū Global Learning Lab Are Raising the Bar
The young people growing up on Hawaiʻi Island today will inherit both the beauty and the burden of decisions being made right now — about waste, climate, land use, and the future of these islands. That is not a rhetorical point. It is a material reality. And it is why investing in youth leadership in the Zero Waste movement is not optional. It is essential. Recycle Hawaiʻi has long believed that meaningful youth engagement looks different from a classroom worksheet or a single beach cleanup. It looks like young people doing real work,...
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Why Policy Matters — and Why Recycle Hawaiʻi Shows Up for It
There is a version of environmental work that stays close to home — the cleanup, the compost bin, the reusable bag. That work matters. But without policy change, it will always be outpaced by the systems that produce waste faster than any community effort can absorb it. This is why Recycle Hawaiʻi invests in advocacy and policy work. Not because we believe legislation solves everything — it doesn’t — but because the rules that govern how materials are produced, used, and discarded in Hawaiʻi ultimately determine how much room our...
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Breaking Down Cardboard: Why This Overlooked Material Is a Cornerstone of Hawaiʻi Island’s Composting Future
When people picture composting, they often picture food scraps — banana peels, coffee grounds, vegetable trimmings. What they picture less often is cardboard. But for Hawaiʻi Island’s growing network of composting operations, cardboard isn’t an afterthought. It’s essential infrastructure. From the commercial compost operations that process restaurant and grocery waste to the backyard bins where families turn kitchen scraps into garden gold, cardboard plays a foundational role. It is, in composting terms, the...
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Leave It Better Than You Found It: Zero Waste Events and What Hilo’s 2026 Hoʻolaulea Proved Is Possible
There is something quietly radical about throwing a party and leaving the place cleaner than you found it. For most of its history, the large community festival has been accepted as an inherently wasteful event. Thousands of people, single-use everything, mountains of trash at the end. It was just the cost of gathering. Recycle Hawaiʻi doesn’t accept that premise — and the 2026 Hilo Hoʻolaulea gave us the chance to prove why. What Zero Waste Events Actually Mean A Zero Waste event is not a perfectly waste-free event. It’s an...
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After the Ban: Making Single-Use Plastic Restrictions Work for Everyone on Hawaiʻi Island – Copy
Hawaiʻi Island is no stranger to bold environmental commitments. From protecting the coral reefs of Puako to defending the sacred summit of Maunakea, our community has long understood that the land and ocean are not resources to be used carelessly — they are relationships to be honored. So when conversations about banning single-use plastics on the Big Island gain momentum, they do so on fertile ground. But a ban, on its own, is only a starting point. The real work — the harder, more nuanced work — is ensuring that the shift away from...
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Youth from Hawaii and Louisiana Unite to Tackle Plastic Pollution
When negotiators met to finalize the United Nations Global Plastics Treaty in mid-August, the desperate need to stem the growth of toxic plastic pollution rested on the promise that a binding agreement could finally curb the petrochemical industry’s destruction. But as the talks collapsed under the weight of corporate lobbying, youth movements around the world felt what many already knew: Governments aren’t going to save us from plastic. The treaty’s watered-down language — stripped of enforcement mechanisms and loopholes for “recycling...
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