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Simplify the Holidays Wrap Up
Jan 25, 2010 | By Lala Buzzell
Together, we simplified. We took a breather from the norm - a skip away from the status quo during the holiday season. A brave operation! We found simplifying the Holidays easy and rewarding.
In honor of island values of stewardship, ohana, and aloha, Kanu teamed up with the Kokua Hawaii Foundation for our Simplify the Holidays campaign. We affirmed the goodness of the homespun gift, focused on time spent with family and friends, and gave deeper consideration to the environmental impact that large amounts of holiday rubbish can have upon our islands. We chose to embrace the spirit of the holidays just a little tighter – a focus on giving of ourselves and our time, rather than just giving more stuff.
Kanu member Nova Lee held gift making sessions on Maui, O‘ahu, and the Big Island of Hawai‘i, showing us how to turn old t-shirts into handbags and repurpose scrap fabric. Arlene Matsubara showed us how to wrap everything from wine bottles to boxes in fabric using the furoshiki techniques.
Members Annie Heslinga and Cherub Silverstein continued Kanu's ongoing work with moms and keiki at the Salvation Army Shelter for Women & Children, building gardens, making ornaments and cards, and sharing time, work, and food together.
We even combined furlough Friday work with our STH efforts, teaming up with Hawai‘i Education Matters and Save Our Schools Hawai‘i to bring holiday crafting with recycled materials to students spending their Fridays at the Leeward YMCA in Waipahu.
And, in an act of kuleana and island-style activism, we went to Ala Moana Shopping Center giving our time during this busy season to offer free gift wrapping with all-recycled materials to shoppers as Christmas drew near. We showed our own commitment to reduce waste during the holidays and asked others to join us in the effort.
Many partners helped us in our campaign to simplify. The folks at Kokua Hawaii were instrumental in every way. Hagadone Printing donated large reams of left-over recycled paper to use for card-making and gift-wrapping with reclaimed paper. Goodwill Industries and others volunteers donated clothing and fabric scraps. Instead of buying new wrapping paper and creating more trash, we found creative ways to reuse and thereby reduce our eco-footprint.
We had lots of help spreading the message. Green Magazine Hawai'i featured the campaign, and both Whole Foods and Foodland / Sack-N-Save shared information with their customers. We even got some ink in the Honolulu Advertiser. And, finally, our wonderful friends at KGMB aired four morning spots to help promote the campaign.
In all, nearly 1,500 people participated in the campaign this year. Almost 300 of us recycled at our holiday parties and used reusable or biodegradable plate-ware instead of paper or plastic. About 340 of us combined errands to save gas and cut greenhouse gas emissions. More than 300 of us donated to charities, volunteered, or gave directly to families in need. And, almost 600 of us wrapped gifts with reused materials rather than brand new wrapping paper.
Together, our commitments to change holiday habits added up to big impact: more than 13 tons of waste we kept out of landfills and incinerators, 8 tons of greenhouse gases prevented, enough paper to save 215 trees, thousands of dollars donated and nearly a thousand hours of service to local charities, and almost 1 ½ tons of containers recycled.
Mahalo to all who gave of themselves, and who gave a gift of eco-consciousness to our islands and our island earth.
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