 One day noon tide Howard wake think tech Hawaii cold green. I hope you're feeling reused today because we have to distinguish hosts from reuse Hawaii. These are the people who deconstruct homes rather than destruct homes and make good use of all that material. In the old building or old home, one prime example why this is so valuable is that many old homes have really, really, really good wood in them. Cedar, redwood, oak, whereas the common would these days is pine. Think about it, you deconstruct the home, and then you put those materials in the warehouse as they will describe and other people use them to construct new things. What does that do that prevents the necessity of people in the Northwest cutting down more trees and taking away all that beautiful carbon dioxide that the tree was absorbing. That takes a lot of energy then you have to cut it up into boards and links then you have to transport it all the way here, and then get it to the construction site and when you're constructing a new home from raw board, you are producing a heck of a lot of energy or material that's going to waste. Look at the huge bins outside of a new construction site for homes is two by four is four by four is everything just sticking all over the place, utterly going to waste. Whereas, if you reconstruct the home you have these beautiful old materials, build this come in. Ah, that's just for me that's just for me that's just for me. I'm going to be using all of this good stuff. Plus, you're employing people instead of expending fossil fuel energy. You are expending human energy what does that translate into jobs, not just any old job but good paying satisfying job. Speaking of which satisfied, I have two very, very satisfied people with me today. Harley did Rickson. She's the communication assistant for reuse Hawaii and Ariana Wayland, the communications director for reuse Hawaii. Hello, ladies. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you for joining us. And please take it away, and just follow, just have the slides come up when you want to take it away. Okay. Thank you so much Howard for that lovely introduction and for bringing the community into this space of learning the difference between deconstruction and destruction. So we're going to start with slide two, and a little bit of background about reuse Hawaii. So reuse Hawaii is an environmental nonprofit formed in 2006 by Quinn Vittem, who is currently our executive director. And it was, it's our mission is focused on cultivating the circular economy in Hawaii and we do this through our two main programs deconstruction which is a sustainable alternative to demolition and redistribution where many of our materials that we salvaged from deconstruction end up. Harley is going to take it away with slide three. So, as Ariana mentioned, one of the main purposes of our mission is to cultivate the search their economy. So the circular economy is in contrast to how we currently operate which is referred to as a linear economy. So in the linear economy, normally will buy something will use it for a short period of time and then it normally gets thrown away. So the circular economy is in contrast to this and operates under the three core concepts of designing out waste and pollution, regenerating natural systems and keeping products and materials in use. So what we do at reuse Hawaii falls under all three of these concepts. And, you know, cultivating the circular economy is, you know, it's about transforming our lifestyles but it's also about switching our mindset to and one of the wonderful things about the circular economy in Hawaii is that Hawaii has historical precedence for building and implementing a system like this. You know the system is a great example of the circular economy, where all waste is designed out and the system by itself is regenerative in nature. And now we're going to talk about slide four. This slide says trash is a resource that hasn't found a home, and that is a core concept for reuse as an island community, you know managing our waste is crucial for the health of our ecosystem. And over the past two years, our waste crisis has come to a head in Hawaii. Our landfill the only construction and demolition landfill on a walk who is slated to close within the next five years, and construction demolition waste is the number one contributor to that waste stream. So, as you can see, like we have to manage our waste better we have to look at waste as a resource, and we feel really fortunate that that's what our nonprofit does. So we're going to go to slide five now and this is Harley. So just some more details on deconstruction. It's sort of a new idea for some people but what deconstruction is is the sustainable alternative to demolition. So we have a team that will go in and hand disassembled building piece by piece in the opposite order that it was put up. And this is to salvage as much material as possible and reclaim the embodied energy of these materials. So by embodied energy we mean all the energy that it took to originally produce and ship these materials, we're now putting more value into it because that's what we're going to do again. So last year in fiscal year 2021, our work reduced greenhouse gas emissions by over 350 tons, which is the equivalent of removing 75 cars from the road for a year. Through 75 unique deconstruction projects, and this ranged from whole house deconstruction to minor remodels, and which all of these projects contributed to the diversion of 462 tons of material from the landfill. And all of our clients who received the deconstruction from us also received the tax-adaptable donation receipt for all of the materials that they donated from the deconstruction. So it's really a win-win on both sides. There's economic benefits, environmental benefits, and social benefits, which is what comes from cultivating the circular economy. So we're going to go to slide six, which is a picture from our redistribution center in Kaka'ako. Hopefully some of your viewers have been here. Our redistribution centers are sustainable hubs where we redistribute donated and salvaged material both from our deconstruction projects and from our community donations at large. A core part of our mission is to provide our community with affordable materials. And we're really proud to say that all of our materials are marked at 40 to 90% of their retail value. And last year we saved the community over half a million dollars and had over 23,000 unique community members come to our redistribution centers. We have one in Kaka'ako, as I mentioned, and we also have one in Kailua, Kona next to the road behind the Costco on the Big Island. And at our Kaka'ako location, we're also proud to host the Honolulu Tool Library where members can borrow tools instead of having to purchase them. And by offering this sharing service, they're our partner in the circular economy. If you could go to slide seven, we're going to introduce our workforce development program. So our workforce development program was designed in the early stages of the pandemic when we realized that our local economy was unfairly tilted towards the tourism industry and that we needed to offer our community sustainable job training. And we're so excited to offer this program and participants come from a wide range of backgrounds of different ages and abilities. And they've honestly infused, reused Hawaii with renewed optimism and excitement over our work as we have trained them in skills ranging from woodworking to gaining material knowledge, nonprofit management, retail side, and we even have a few on our deconstruction team. We're currently partnered with Kubu as a host site, and we worked with youth filled in the city of Honolulu. So we can go to slide eight, and Harley's going to introduce the local tree reclamation project. So a couple years ago we did a pilot project for the local tree reclamation. So this all started when Quinn was driving by the Capitol and he noticed that they were taking down some monkey pod trees. And so he just pulled right over and went up to them and asked what was what's their plan for these trees. And he found out that they were going to be sent to the wood chipper or the landfill. And he just saw this as another great opportunity to turn what some people might have considered waste into a resource. So through that one experience we started the local tree reclamation program. So we take, we take donations of locally filled trees so trees that have either fallen in storms or had to be removed for safety or development purposes, or even trees that have been removed for conservation efforts. So we're currently offering beautiful monkey pod and Norfolk pine slabs at our coca-oca warehouse, and we'll continually get new slabs of different species as well. So, you know, not only are we offering another way to divert materials from the landfill and offer our community with locally sourced materials, but it's also been really fun to see what people have created from this. And live edge shelves, tables, bars, and even a shower bench. So, yeah, been great. Okay. Just as a side note, in addition to accepting tree donations for, you know, some of them fell in storms, some of them have been removed for development purposes or for safety reasons. We also partnered with a few larger landowners to help with conservation efforts to restore native forests. Okay, so we can go on to slide number nine. So we also offer community pickups for those that would like to donate materials but don't have a way to deliver them to our warehouse. We have a really easy pick up request form on our website for anyone who's interested and any accepted donations come with a tax deductible donation receipt. And hardly let me interrupt and ask what sort of items are you accepting. So we accept secondhand furniture. So, you know, couches, tables, chairs, are more stressors, really any type of furniture pretty much. We also take in sinks and toilets, but we just ask that they're, you know, newer. Same thing with appliances. We only accept appliances that are in working condition and under five years old. So we have a form on our website that outlines all of our materials that we can accept. Okay, I think we can go to slide 10. Okay, so some of you may have seen this is our most recent park let build in the neighborhood of Kalihi right outside of Richie's Drive in. And this was a community partnership builds that better block Hawaii reached out to us and in coordination with a local artist. And he designed this park let this is actually the masterpiece of Phil Ziegler, who is our in house craftsman, and he designed this space, and then local artist boss sure came in and did this gorgeous flowers and like mural that you see on it. And we're really excited to be partnering with better blocks Hawaii to help bring more community park let's there are a few in Kaimuki currently outside of the surfing pig, and one close to juicy brew as well. So it's outside of Richie's Drive in. It's, it's actually a really beautiful park let so I hope that people get a chance to visit it. Thank you. So we're going to go to slide 11, which is some more of Phil's beautiful work. So, these are actually word warehouse beams that you see on the left hand side reason why you had the privilege to help deconstruct word warehouse, and as a part of that we were able to salvage these beautiful word word warehouse beams and hammock our local insurance company asked us to slab up some of the pieces of the word warehouse beams for their new space which you can see on the far right. And they painted them gold so they look less like would but this is an excellent example of reusing material and transforming you know what otherwise be considered waste into not only resources but stylish and functional pieces. And we can go to slide 12. So this is an example of deconstruction turned into a gorgeous renovation. I believe that's warm up flooring right Ariana. Yes. Yes, so that's that's why I'm not flooring that you see there. So the transformation picture was sent to us by one of our supporters after he had the flooring that he purchased from us installed. And I really think this transformation highlights that you know just because material is second hand or salvage. It doesn't degrade the quality at all. If anything you can increase the quality and you know upcycle and create something beautiful. Yeah, and this was actually from a recent project. So in this slide you actually see our deconstruction crew lifting up the floorboards and this was from a former retail space in Alamoana. So we're really keeping that circular economy theory going here. So this is a question that we get asked a lot is like, okay, but is it safe to use salvaged or reclaimed material in your bills. Well, this is a question that we get asked a lot is like, okay, but is it safe to use salvaged or reclaimed material in your bills. Well, this house that you see was made from reclaimed materials by one of our supporters, Orion Stanbro, most of the materials came from reuse Hawaii, and not only is it like a stylish and functional space. It's like such a great example of using reclaimed and salvaged materials so we thought we would share it with you. And then we can go to slide 14. Yeah, we just want to wrap it up and say thank you for having us and let everyone know that we're doing in Earth Month bingo through our Instagram. So Ariana and I created a template of different environmental related activities. And by completing the bingo, you could win a $100 gift card to reuse and some other prizes that we're still ironing out the details for but to find out more about our programs and to find out more about the Earth Month bingo follow us on our socials that reuse white. Yeah. And our Earth Month bingo is also like in collaboration with a couple of local nonprofits and environmental groups. On that list, we're going to be encouraging people to attend beach cleanups and community garden events to shop locally and to just this whole entire mindset behind Earth Month bingo is to encourage people to see how easy it is to be sustainable and to get involved in their community. And this is going out via I assume social media via a whole bunch of nonprofits is that how this is working. We're mostly launched through our page on social media, but we will have access to it on our website as well when the month again so it'll start April 1. And you mentioned you're coordinating this with other nonprofits is it or. Absolutely. So we are also partnering with a zero waste store called protea zero waste in Kailua, and we're partnering with a few local nonprofits that will be hosting events, including Sir frider and 808 cleanups to amplify their events. To get the word out literally to thousands of people. Yeah, great. Yeah, we're really going to be a few work days and few work days a few cleanups. So just a way to get involved with the community and help the environment like you're doing it. So does that conclude your slides because I have a whole bunch of questions here. That concludes our slides. Number one I was intrigued by the fact, sort of occurred to me that you can do new flooring with this. Because as I said before, a lot of this reclaimed lumber is a really high quality. Maybe that you would have a hard time getting today or you have would have to pay an arm and a leg for it. And create probably some beautiful flooring with this. Is that the case. Absolutely. So the example that you saw was actually of reclaimed flooring. So it already was flooring. And most of the material that we do reclaim is actually quite old. It's from old growth forests that you will never get that material from again. And what passes through our store is over 600 years old. I mean, you can tell by the wood grain alone. So yeah, it's very special. And we have a variety of flooring right now as we have. Oh, for bamboo walnut. So lots of flooring to choose from if you come down to our warehouse and take a look. And if people wanted to come down and take a look, where would they go? And what are your hours? Absolutely. So we are located in Honolulu at 200 Kaabe Street. And our hours are Tuesday through Saturday, nine to five. Okay. And 200 Kaabe Street that sounds kind of like right in the heart of Kakaako. It is. It is right next to the medical school and right across Alamona from Salt. Okay, we had a question come in. What can you do with linoleum and drywall? So this is a great question. And it's actually something that our executive director Quinn Vitam had been talking to me about recently. Drywall is actually more of a policy issue that we will have to allow people to recycle drywall. We currently are not allowed to because of the policies that are in place. But we have been working with some people in the gasification industry who are very interested in recycling drywall. Very interesting. And then I'm intrigued by the fact that you can on order pick up old furniture and so far, because most of us when we have old furniture we think of the city's bulky item pickup. And we just make an appointment and put the appliances or furniture whatever out by the curb the night before. So you are you're an alternative to bulky item pickup. Yeah, I mean the pickup service is just another way to like extend our resources to the community. And through the pickup form. It will be able to determine if we can accept the material or not because you know we want our warehouse to be filled with high quality material that can be of great use to the community so we're not able to accept everything. But through the pickup form, we're able to determine if a material is acceptable or not. A lot of people have big pieces of furniture, like a couch or something which is in good condition but they are physically unable to actually get it down to curb can you have a couple of strong people come up and physically remove it from the house and get it into the truck. I think we usually ask that the piece of furniture is ready to go on the curb just because we do have limited staffing as a nonprofit. So it's always better if a piece of furniture is ready to go on the curb but in the case that someone would need help it never hurts to ask and if we have the capabilities at the time we're always happy to help out. Thank you. Thank you. And then finally, a little quiz. What was probably the first reuse of an existing building in Honolulu. I have a question. Why is Fort Street Mall called Fort Street Mall. Oh, I'm not sure Howard. This is a difficult quiz. We only have a minute so I'll give the short answer. I'm going to make a presence back in the Hawaiian kingdom, and they built one fort on the south coast of Hawaii, and another fort across the street. This is where Aloha Tower is now. And those King Kamehameha the second who decided he didn't care for the Russians, and he ordered the fort torn down it was made out of coral block, and he pushed the blocks, Mackay, and that was the first landfill. Land addition I should say he knew he needed to improve the facility port facilities because that was a way his major port already. So the closer he could get to the actual water, rather than having it be kind of swampy beach, the better. And the first landfill like that was the stones from the Russian Fort. Hence, the name Fort Street, which now has become Fort Street Mall. And get that it has no extra charge. So we are definitely out of time. Arley and Ariana, thank you so very, very much. And I hope that this results in your being able to expand your wonderful business even more. Thank you very much. See you next time.