Editor’s Note
Here’s our Earth Week gift to you: The Weekly’s first all-local Sustainability Guide, filled with resources and simple steps you can take every day to live greener and better on our ‘aina. Mind you, it’s for your use all year.
Cover Story continued
Best Energy Saves
Hawaii’s electricity prices are three times higher than the national average, which makes sense when you think about what it costs to get that electricity here. What doesn’t make sense is why we import so much energy when we have an abundance of solar, wind, geothermal and hydro energy that’s not only available to us, but benefits us greatly: A study for Blue Planet Foundation (BPF) found that for each solar credit dollar spent in Hawaii, the State receives up to $2.67 in additional tax revenues over the life of the system.
For the Body
Labels don’t mean everything. Products can legally make claims like “organic,” “nontoxic,” “natural” or “chemical free,” but without a USDA Certified Organic label for either the whole product or specific ingredients, they may be empty promises.
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Repeat
So there’s a reason the three Rs are in that order. At the front end, you reduce nonessentials you consume–plastics, for instance.
Good Green Wood
Despite the myth of the infinitely giving tree, don’t contribute to the pillage of endangered species or noble old-growth forests. Choose wood reclaimed from an old building, salvaged from the forest or even removed from an ecosystem area due to its invasive nature there.
Eco-nesting
Composting kitchen scraps, using products made from recycled products and choosing cleaners that won’t release toxic gases (VOCs) are tangible ways to get a greener, healthier living space. Below, we present some new and easy choices.
A Conscientious Closet
My friend Clare’s clothing swap never appealed to me, but one night a glass of wine did, so I showed up with a bag full of dresses and shorts that no longer did me any favors. A few glasses of wine later, I had a bag full of new clothes.
From Here to Green
Whether it’s moving our own bodies or the products we love, toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere with each fossil-fuel powered trip. Thanks to Hawaii’s Electric Vehicle (EV) Ready Program, there are 1,287 registered, emission-free EVs in the state.
Water: Conserve Our Wai
In Hawaii, water and forests are inextricably linked. “The ‘ohu, mist, is the breath of the gods,” explains cultural consultant and kumu hula Kehaulani Kekua.
Savor and Sustain
Harmony between food and land is the basis of sustainable Hawaiian agriculture. The ancients’ eating methods were far ahead of their time, echoed, however unconsciously, in the sustainable cooking mantras reverberating through foodie metropolises today: Take only what you need; waste none.
Organic Gardening
Though much of modern agriculture relies on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, these products aren’t friendly to the environment or human health. Petroleum-based fertilizers can actually kill the microorganisms that contribute to soil fertility, requiring ever-greater inputs; pesticides are increasingly linked to the decline of crucial pollinators, such as butterflies and bees.
OpConnect acquires Better Place network
Last month, OpConnect, the technologically advanced electric vehicle charging system based in Portland, Ore., bought the Better Place charging network in Hawaii. This means the 77 charge spots across the state, which include 154 charge points, will be replaced with OpConnect’s chargers.
Our Top Picks
Top 5 Green Local Websites [energy.hawaii.gov] [hawaiicleanenergyinitiative.org] [hawaiihomegrown.net] [heco.com] [slowfoodoahu.org] 5 Cutting Edge Trends Donate old athletic shoes to the Converse Outlet Store in Waikele (94-790 Lumiaina St., Ste. 105, Waipahu, 676-6096) Raise your own chickens for eggs (1830 Kanakanui St., [asagihatchery.com], 845-4522) Sort trash into more bins: e-waste, reusables, hazardous, compost ([opala.org]) Install a rain barrel to collect water for your plants ([boardofwatersupply.com]) Replace grass with Hawaiian plants (Lyon Arboretum, 988-0472) Top 5 Green Local Politicians Rep.
Green Eating
No ecotrip is complete without ono meals combining low-impact provenance and high-impact taste. Look for places that offer organic and/or locally grown foods.
How to Get There
Coming to Hawaii, or going interisland, it’s hard to get a leg up on offsetting the tourism industry’s carbon emissions, not least because you have to hop into a 200-ton, 36,000-gallon gas-guzzling flying machine. But there’s green in the sky and, once you’re here, on the road.
What Does it Mean to Travel Green?
So how do we check ourselves when checking out of the daily grind for a little while? By thinking about ecotourism, instead of regular old mass tourism.
What to Do
Once you get off the plane, you’ve got to find stuff to do (that doesn’t ravish the ecosystem). Since DIYers typically default to what they know or have read about, you need the help of someone who can take you on adventures you probably never expected, an adventure-giver who doubles as an educator.
Where to Stay
Over the years that the Weekly has monitored hotels, lodging and campground facilities for the green incentives they provide, we’ve noticed a big increase in the number of eco-conscious places to hang your hat. Here are a few that earn our eco stamp of approval.
Clayton Chong, M.D.
Defeating Obesity
Clayton Chong, M.D. / More than a fifth of Hawaii’s people–21.8 percent–are obese. Among native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders, the rate is 31.7 percent.
Spring Arts Dance
Island Hopping
Spring Arts Dance / Spring Arts Dance Make a resolution to enrich your life with dance, whether by appreciating other people doing it, or by getting down with your own bad self. Dance can be many things: entertaining, difficult, amazing, sexy, nerve-wracking, even spiritual.
Spring Arts Music
A Righteous Spring
Spring Arts Music / Spring Arts Music The musical offerings this season initially presented themselves with a sense of doom–the symphony is flat-lined, her musicians scattered to the winds; presenters have a fraction of the gigs they used to field. With what will we fill our ears?
Spring Arts Visual Arts
Let’s Get Visual
Spring Arts Visual Arts / Spring Arts Visual Arts Galleries and museum walls will exhibit concepts from visiting artists (Phoebe Cummings), as well as our own, some of whom have earned a piping hot and fresh art degree (UH’s 35th Annual Graduate Exhibition). Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams show up, as do local guys Mike Keany and Adam Funari, and humor is the nail that hangs Thurston Twigg-Smith’s collection of contemporary art (Serious Fun) that will force your tongue into your cheek.
Spring Arts Theater
Staging An Exhibition
Spring Arts Theater / Spring Arts Theater Plop a Picasso beside a Degas. Mount a Rothko next to a Rembrandt in the middle of a medieval triptych and see if anyone notices.
Spring Arts film
Springtime for Cinephiles
Spring Arts film / Spring Arts film Hawaii’s film scene never sleeps, thanks to our irrepressible homegrown talent, restless curators, thriving niche impresarios and ever more adventurous commercial programmers. Here’s what’s coming up.
Dishes from Fishcake
Peg O’ CUPS Marked by his signature style of scaled-down pegs protruding from the bases, Daven Hee’s ceramic cups and bowls look neither Asian-influenced like most teacups nor completely Western–like the bowls one finds along the shameful shelves of Walmart. Rather, they are unassuming and contemporary–not impractically artsy, just uncommon enough.
This week
Derelict Downtown
For as long as we can remember, Chinatown has been notorious for drugs, homelessness and filthy streets. Some claim nothing has changed–and that it never will.
Sweet Ride
Bicyclists have long been overlooked by four-wheel riders on Honolulu’s congested streets. In the gleaming, armored pecking order of the road, cyclists are too often dismissed as lane hogs, hand-signaling nuisances and unfortunates who can’t afford cars.
Hoopili miss
The fate of some 1,525 acres of land at Hoopili in ‘Ewa may have been decided last Wednesday in Hawaii’s First Circuit Court. The decision might have gone differently, but the appellant attorneys’ strategy seemed to collapse as Judge Rhonda Nishimura picked it apart based on technical errors.
Housing First $
Last Thursday, May 9, the Caldwell administration revealed its action plan for solving Honolulu’s homeless problem. But at the City Council’s budget meeting the same day, Budget chair Ann Kobayashi wanted to know where the money for “Housing First” (see Cover Story, pg.
Do it Wright
The Mayor Wright Housing project has been slated for major redevelopment by the Hawaii State Housing Authority (HSHA); requests for qualifications will be going out to developers in three to six months. Nonprofit group Faith Action for Community Equity (FACE) wants to make sure the project’s tenants have a say in the redevelopment process, which could include major renovations or a total rebuild.
Street Disconnect
The Honolulu City Council held a special Committee on Transportation meeting on Tuesday, May 7, to go over its Complete Streets initiative with input from the department directors of Design and Construction (DDC), Planning and Permitting (DPP) and Transportation Services (DTS). At prior meetings, including the Moiliili workshop, community members pressed the idea of combining Complete Streets with Caldwell’s repaving projects, which Dan Burden of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute and some councilmembers have said makes sense.
Stopping Growth
Not much to agree with my friend Doc Berry (“Limits of Growth,” April 17). None of the scenarios he posits will ever materialize.
Get it together
In your Diary of May 8 (“End of the 27th)” you reported on SB 1214, passed by the Legislature. In their nimble way, the Legislature tacked the wheel boot prohibition on a bill that was intended to abolish the Commission on Transportation.
Look both ways
On Friday, May 3, at 3:45 p.m., I was driving town bound through the Wilson tunnel on the Likelike. I was parallel to another car, and there were several other cars following closely behind me.
Thank you!
Congratulations Honolulu Weekly on the recent Pai award for investigative reporting (“Boss GMO,” Jan. 4, 2012).
Truth be told
When the biofuel guys say that costs are “confidential” (“Big-foot Biofuel,” May 8), I reply that since I am the one who is going to end up paying the cost, I have a right to know. Frankly, when everybody tries to hide the costs, I smell rat …
Nature’s beauty
The Foster Botanical Garden never ceases to inspire for an urban setting it is like a step back in time (“See the Flora,” May 8). If Koko Crater Botanical Garden contains the world’s largest plumeria collection as suggested, it may be thanks in part to the Prussian born Dr.
