Our hands were busy making worm bins for vermiculture (recycling food waste using composting worms). It was a bit of a messy task but seeing how busy the worms were motivated us to give them more food and space.
Janice Staab gave a lot of good tips on how to keep the worms happy by giving them the 3 Ds -- darkness, dampness, and dinner!
The next project was making compost bins that don't use worms. We reused wood pallets as the foundation for the bins. Sayo Costantino knows a lot about building compost bins and made the work fun.
After all this work, we created quite an appetite. It's a good thing chef Jason at the John A. Burns School of Medicine's Kuhio Grill cafeteria prepared a hearty lunch for all of us. It was helpful to hear how he got started as a chef and how he tries to cook food that is healthy and uses locally grown products.
Just down the block is ReUse Hawai`i, a quickly growing non-profit organization in Kaka`ako that takes in potential waste from de-construction projects and makes them available for sale to the public at a low price. There we found materials to complete our compost bins for only $20.
And finally, we ended up back on the Leeward Coast at PVT landfill in Lualualei Valley. PVT takes the bulk of construction waste on O`ahu. Our guide told us about how they separate materials from the waste for recyclables, shred and grind the remaining products, and create new landfill cells. It's quite an involved and expensive process.
We sure learned a lot today! Mahalo to all the speakers who helped us learn more about waste management and the jobs that help take care of our `aina.
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