Our young, enthusiastic Waikoloa Garden care-takers and fire experts from Ocean Warriors (Malama Kai Foundation) help install Beach Clean Up Stations at Hapuna Beach State Park. Mahalo for your hard work!
From the Source:
"The wooden boxes contain heavy foil coffee bags, typically tossed by coffee shops but repurposed as garbage bags for beach users to pick up and fill with refuse. Pictures, drawn by area students, decorate the outside. Each station costs about $300 to make and install, Iglehart said.Maintaining the boxes, particularly replenishing the stock of coffee bags, is a task that will fall to volunteers. Several groups of volunteers have already stepped up, Iglehart said, including the Malama Kai Foundation’s Ocean Warriors project, which designed and built the boxes, collected the coffee bags, designed and printed informational signs and created the artwork to decorate the boxes. The Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel has been saving coffee bags for about a year to donate to the project, Iglehart said.
Several other community groups and some high school students in South Kohala have expressed interest in helping restock the boxes, she added.
'It has been such a fun and rewarding opportunity for the Ocean Warriors students to be involved in a project that highlights their involvement in marine protection and their artwork, and also provides important information to members of their own community about how most marine debris begins as beach litter — something we can do our part to help,' Malama Kai Foundation’s Elizabeth Pickett said in an email."
Above: "Kahu L. Kalani Souza does some mele (music) while conducting the blessing ceremony for the pilot Hawaiian Islands Beach Clean Up Stations at Hapuna Beach State Park Friday afternoon." Credit - West Hawaii Today