 This is Stink Tech, Hawaii. Community matters here. Aloha and bienvenido to Hispanic Hawaii. I'm Richard Concepción. Today's program is about plastic pollution. Plastic was introduced in 1862. And today, 50% of the plastic that we use, we only use it for one time. And then we throw it away without the impact that we have on our environment. Our guest for today is Luis Linares. He's a songwriter, a singer, a professional bodyboarder, and environmental activist. He's here representing sustainable coastlines, Hawaii. And he's going to help us to understand what is happening with Hawaii plastic pollution. Welcome to the studio. Hi, Richard. Aloha. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to have you here. So Luis, tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell me about your one love campaign that you have and how you become involved with sustainable coastlines, Hawaii. Well, growing up around the ocean and just having the love for the ocean, we see this kind of stuff firsthand. And I've always been very passionate about keeping the beaches clean. Any random little piece of trash you find, especially once you see firsthand the things that impact marine life directly, you really want to take action and you realize there's not a coincidence that this stuff is in front of you and that it does kill because you see it firsthand because we're in the water all the time. So you just can't help to grab it and it's really frustrating. And I like to call myself an I now warrior. And there's very many of us. But my friend, Fermin, he was good friends with Kahi and the sustainable coastlines crew. And he was like, you've got to start showing up to the clean after you've got to work with these guys. They represent what you like to represent and you'll be able to do it in a much bigger scale. So a little by little, you started volunteering and I've been getting more and more involved. We're obviously always out there because there's the element we work on and it's been a blessing. It's been a magic ride to see the impact that how much people have been getting educated. And it's also a little bit frustrating to know how much more there is to do. But it's definitely just putting little goals in front of us. It's definitely something that's inspiring and to look forward to. So your one love campaign is kind of a combination between the sustainable coastlines, Hawaii and the new campaign. Yeah, one love campaign is what I mainly call the music, but it really is a campaign and it's not just for the music. That is the title I chose for it because I feel like out of all the mediums that I work is the most relevant one because you can use words and move feelings like that. But I understand that humanity's responsibility, no matter what you do, and I'm a dreamer, I chase my dreams and I get to leave them, you know? But if you're an athlete, you're a broadcaster, you're a musician, you're just an office worker. We are to represent and give love. There's one thing we're asked to do and that is the one thing that's gonna save the world. And I feel that when you are in a big platform like some musicians, sometimes singing songs and reaching millions, that responsibility becomes even bigger when you're educating the keiki and the children. So that's where the One Love campaign is all about and it's not just, it's not at all a personal thing. I just take it too hard to represent it, but hopefully inspires other people and other artists and just the entire world as many as possible to do that. Spread love and be one love representative. That's a great inspiration. So let me ask you how and when sustainable cross lines, how I started and you talk about inspiration, how they have become inspired to start this organization to help people here in Hawaii. Right, in reality, I know it started with a group of friends that were very passionate about what was going on, but a little bit of a background story is Kahi Pakaro, who's the director of Sustainable Cosines. He pretty much took a trip around the world with his wife and met the people from Sustainable Cosines New Zealand and saw some of the stuff they were doing and learned a little bit more about the gyres and he saw the pollution that had always frustrated him around the world, but he didn't put it together with his home island of Oahu in Hawaii. And when he came back after he learned about the effects of the gyre and the microplastics, and he thought to himself, I don't see that in Hawaii, but the guys that had studied it a little bit said, no, it's there. It's there. And then he got to the beaches here and just looked a little closer and realized what a massive problem we had. And that inspired and motivated them to start growing little by little and the feedback from the community has been huge and Sustainable Cosines has been growing ever since. I'm now being an example to not just the islands but the entire world. I'm working with the entire state of Hawaii and helping out other organizations that are trying to do similar things and even lobbying. I'm working with some of the bigger corporations that are the main source of the single-use plastics and the education program is massive. It's super important to just start avoiding and refusing single-use plastics. When you mentioned about the gyre, a lot of people wonder what is that? So let's show a video real quick and so people understand what the gyre is all about. Yeah, absolutely. Great. So a gyre is a natural phenomenon. A gyre is simply a rotating current system that's comprised of the Earth's rotation coupled with currents and prevailing winds. So it's essentially like a massive whirlpool of vortex in the oceans. Say a piece of floating plastic from California in the North Pacific gyre can take 10 years to make the rotation from California to Japan and all the way back. So what we have found is that these plastic particles are not just in the North Pacific gyre, they're in all five sub-tropical gyres and all these gyres have several garbage patches in them, eight garbage patches total in the five gyres. So that was our inspiration to start the Five Gyres Institute to look at this plastic pollution issue on a global scale and try and show the world this is an international problem. These plastics are coming from every continent in the world and solutions have to be on the international level. When I first heard this talk in 2001 from Captain Moore, I heard description of an island of garbage that people were calling the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. In the media it was described as a Texas-sized island. It's really hard to quantify how much plastic is floating in the world's oceans. These garbage patches that exist in the gyres, they're elusive, they change shape, they move around. You may trawl for a 10-hour straight, you'll get a handful of plastic, you put it back in 10 hours more and there's nothing. So it's essentially like a plastic soup of all of this disposable waste that we create on land masses from California to Asia, Canada, Mexico, enters this North Pacific gyre and gets swept up into this accumulation zone. Islands in the gyres, we're discovering are the natural nets for trash at sea. It's impractical to try and scoop out trash out of the ocean. What we can do is wait for it to wash ashore. So to clean a gyre, clean your beach, clean your watershed, clean your street. As close you can get to the source, it's the better way we can solve the problem of plastics in the ocean. All right, this is very difficult things to understand, but now that we see the video, I can get an idea of what is happening with plastic pollution in the ocean. Can you tell us what sustainable coastlines is doing to help the community? I know you have different programs up there. Can you talk to me about some of the programs that is helping with the plastic pollution? Yeah, absolutely. And one of the most tangible things about the gyre is to see the effects of it in a place like Molokai. We just came back from there, literally last night. Last night, right? Thank you for coming. Thank you so much. Of course, thanks for having us. We just came back from Molokai from our fourth annual beach cleanup over there, and it was amazing to get the community involved. I have all the key keys from the local towns show up and just be a part of the event. And the amount of trash that we got out of what you would expect to be a deserted beach almost is ridiculous. We filled up 230 food containers, and we still didn't manage to get all the stuff that we picked up in just one cleanup to fit it in the containers. And we still managed to separate the trash and just use plastic aside, hard plastic. It's not a regular Hawaii pie plastic. It's different and a little bit more difficult to recycle and see what kind of things can be made out of it. So it's something that Sustainable Coastal has been involved with. And thanks to our partners Parley and Adidas and a couple others, Corona as well, trying to make different products that come from marine debris specifically. So we filled up an entire 30 food container of just plastic, and we still couldn't fit it all. And then an entire container of fish nets and the rest of trash. And this is pretty much a deserted part of the Siak Island. So it's all from the gyre, which is crazy to think about. People don't understand it when they don't see it in a tangible manner. But I think there's a couple of clips that they showed about that stuff. They had the amount of trash that was there. So all those volunteers, they just come in and you gotta create a timeframe when they're gonna come in and they participate. Or do you gotta have a specific program for each school, for each community to do something in regards to this pollution. Right, so one of the biggest programs we have is Sustainable Coastal. Hawaii, it's the educational program. And we had our education team go out to Molokai for about a week, and we reached over 500 kids every school over there. Got touched pretty much and got educated on the effects of the gyre, where this trash comes from, single use plastics, and what they can do to avoid to just make a difference, even though they're in such a small community, their impact is massive. So that's one of the programs we have. Another program we have going with Sustainable Coastal is International Volunteer Headquarters. So it's an opportunity for the international community to come to Hawaii. And we pretty much educate them on what's going on. They get to have some housing and spend some time volunteering and they get to work at some of the taro farms with the local Hawaiian families and do non-traditional things that you would normally do as a regular tourist. Here you're putting some time and giving back to the Aina. And more importantly, getting educated to take it back to whatever it is these people come from and educate because it is a worldwide program. That's a great program. So Luis, we are going to take a quick break. We're going to return after this break and we'll continue to talk a story about pollution and plastic and the community. Absolutely. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. Welcome back. We're here talking a story with Luis Linares, who represents Sustainable Coastal Alliance Hawaii, helping us to understand what is happening with plastic pollution here in Hawaii. So we were talking about some of the programs that Sustainable Coastal Alliance Hawaii provide to the community. So tell me more about that. Well, another huge program for us is the Waste Diversion Program. One of the main outlets for that program is the surfing contest when they come to town in the winter season because it's a huge platform internationally. The entire world is watching. But we get to showcase what a little bit of effort can do in reducing any event's environmental impact. What we do with Waste Diversion is we separate the trash. We spread out bins throughout the event and we take measurements of that, trying to encourage the vendors and the organizers of the event to avoid single-use plastics. They're going to use forks or they're disposable to use compostable ones. If they're going to use plates or disposable, use compostable ones. Or even better, don't use disposable ones, but just use reusable ones. Reusable cups, real glass cups, real silverware, real plates. And we take numbers of the amount of waste that gets diverted out of the landfill. And depending on the event, like an event like the Triple Crown that lasts for six weeks, three giant events, we kept almost 70% of the trash out of the landfill. And the compost, like all the vendors use compostable material. And the greens that the vendors were using are from the farm right there of the wall from front of the venue where we take the compostables too. So we like to say it goes a full circle, which is pretty special. It's showing an example to the world what sustainability is all about. And it's one of the ways for the organization to collect funds. We've done big concerts, like the Steve Ioki and the Electric Palms Music Festival. Wow, that's nice. Yeah, a lot of stuff. I got the Ocean 8 event, which was also to promote education on what's happening with single-use plastics and stuff. Stuff like that, and it's really cool. We've even done conventions, weddings, and it's a really cool program. Other other programs though are the ones where people always ask to try to organize their own beach cleanups. I was gonna ask you about that, yeah. So that's a really cool program. We just try to facilitate as much as we can, and depending... It takes a lot of planning, but if somebody else is trying to do it, we try to provide as much support as we can, and we live in a hybrid tie set on our social media to have some of our volunteers show up because people might live nearby and we're all very passionate about what we do. Kind of do it every day, but when you do it with a group of people together, more hands, the impact is much bigger. So it's really special. That's great. Let me ask you, what is the impact of this plastic pollution happening at Ocean Food? We love to eat sushi, we love to eat fish, and we also sometimes see pictures, like dolphins, turtles, they get cut off and all this plastic stuff. Talk to me about that. Right, the other impact is pretty crazy, and it's all very new information, so we're still kind of trying to process the impact that it gets to us directly along the food chain. With bigger debris, like nets, and plastic bags, a lot of the bigger animals getting trouble, like turtles and dolphins are precious animals. Animals have long lives, and they're key for the environment, and they're not meant to be dying because of random trash and human pollution. We're definitely affecting the oceans in that way, but when it comes to microplastics, it's even more dangerous and it affects all kinds of wildlife. Starting with the seabirds, actually all birds pick up trash. They say, if the wind doesn't get it first, the bird's gonna get it second, and the fish third, and so on and so on, and you might be a little bit farther down the line, but we get it too, because fish are eating these microplastics. Certain colors are like more than others, but it's really crazy to see it in first person when you find just random plastic on the shoreline, and you can see clear fish bites, you can almost feel their teeth, so you can tell they've been nibbling at it, and it's hard to tell the impact of that has on the human food chain yet, but we're definitely eating plastic, and it's increasing by the minute, and the amount of plastic that's in the ocean, it's just unbelievable. It seems almost like a mission impossible, but slowly but surely cleaning it, but the key is to start refusing and avoiding the single-use plastics that are gonna outlive some of your kids and some of your generations. It's all right, see, it burns over 100 to 1,000 years, and it would take for the plastic to degrade. Yeah, and it just keeps micro-composing, I think is the term, so it just keeps getting smaller and smaller, but it doesn't disappear, and the smaller it is, the easier it is for other organisms to consume it. So the fishes are eating and we eating the same thing. Absolutely, and that's just how the Jire video, like, even in open ocean, when there's nothing around you, trail, and it looks like blue, beautiful, perfect, magic ocean, and you just trail with the net for a little while, and you're gonna get micro-plastic on the gigantic oceans, it's like, oh, unreal, and they try at different depths and whatnot, and it's pretty scary and sad and frustrating. So it's all about changing our behavior so we can help with this plastic pollution. So let me ask you, what is your opinion about the rules that came out of banding plastic bag? Do you think the government is doing enough? Do you think we're going the right direction? What is your opinion about that? What would you do? I think it's definitely a step in the right direction. I feel like Hawaii, in a way, is leading by example of sustainability to a lot of the world, even though there's other states having gone even farther, like California and stuff, but trash generates itself, right? Something will fly out of the window or anything of the sort, and big trash like plastic bags, they're so dangerous, because even for kids, for human kids, you put it around your face and you're gonna choke, and the wind, they're just so easily carried by the wind, and then everything else that's next, as we already explained. So it's really nice, it's a good step forward, but there's a lot of loop holes. Now they make the bags a little bit thicker, and they consider them reusable bags. Yes, in a great world, we make reusable bags, because that's just what we do, but not everybody's aware, and once I think flies out of the window, not on purpose, we say, but it just flies out of the window. And it didn't catch it in time. Exactly, and there's, you know. So what is it different between making it a little bit thicker or making it the way it was made? What is the difference? Honestly, it's just a loop hole. It will qualify, it's a loop hole in the law. It will qualify as a reusable bag, and not a disposable bag, therefore they can still use it in the supermarkets. So we're not doing enough. There was a bill that was trying to avoid that loop hole, and it failed, and it's being worked on again. I don't deal that much with that part of the organization, but I know it's something that's important. And hopefully, you know, I think they just banned Styrofoam out of Maui, if I'm not mistaken, or one of the neighbor islands, which is great, man. That thing also just doesn't disappear, carried by the wind so easily, and it just gets eaten up, and it's just the terrible thing. So what would it be your recommendation of people like me to start working on some kind of ashen home work places that would go? So what is ashen would you do? One of the main, like, most simple ones is to start showing your pride of being an environmental activist. Have a hydroflash, have a reusable water bottle, and teach on that. Try to avoid those products that are made in single-use plastics. And then try to make it a fun thing with your own kids or kids around the community to try to figure out how many single-use plastics you're using a day, and how you could replace them. If you just carry your own silverware with you, that's already a couple of forks and knives you're taking out of single-use plastics. And even your toothbrush, your little shampoo bottle, stuff like that. So just look for products that avoid single-use plastics, and they're actually environmentally aware. And start it at home. See what you can do to replace those products, because we are the consumer, and the consumption is massive. Like, you grab a Coke bottle, you open it, there it goes, there's a cap right there that kills all the trust. And then there's a bottle 10 minutes later. You have a sample of something on the supermarket, and you grab your little plastic fork. It just goes straight in the trash. That was one time, you know? So then everything goes back into how we behave or how we deal with plastics and our education. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's key, you know, try to teach kids about that. And remember, this is all a new cultural thing. It's not very new that we had a disposable culture. Everything's made to throw away. And they did it with plastic, which was a huge mistake. But we're learning through a sustainable coastline. Hawaii is teaching us and guide us in the right direction. And we want to say it, Luis, we're running out of time, but we want to say thank you so much for coming and helping us out to understand what is happening. We plastic pollution here in Hawaii. Thank you so much for having me, Richard, and thank you guys out there in online TV land. Keep doing your part. Thanks for watching, and I hope I see you soon. As well, we also have a beach cleanup coming up on the west side, September 23rd and 24th. So if you guys can make it to that, it should be really fun. It's going to be a Makua beach. It's always really fun for the kids and everyone. So try to check out the social media at Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii on Instagram or Facebook. Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii.org. All right, thank you so much. All right, it's time for us to say goodbye, and thank you for this great opportunity. And don't forget that you can see us at Thin Tech Hawaii on Richard Concepcion. And my email is rickconcept at gmail.com if you want to get in contact with me. And we're going to leave you with a quick video to inspire you and to get you motivated to change your behavior about plastic pollution in Hawaii. Thank you.