 Aloha and bienvenidos to Hispanic Hawaii. I'm Richard Concepcion hosting with Ana Jiménez Madmellan. Today's program is about reduce, reuse and recycle. Every community has its own problem when it comes to the environment. We know that the number one solution is recycle. Today's guest is Jay Becker. She is team Miss Pacific Ocean and we have Gianna May. She is junior Miss Pacific Ocean. They are here to tell us everything that you need to know about the reduce, reuse, recycle program. So we want to say today, thank you to the program. Welcome. Thank you for having us. All right. So let's start real quick but telling me a little bit about yourself. So we'll start with you Jay. So I'm a part of the Miss Earth organization in Pageant. So I serve as the Miss Teen Pacific Ocean, which is a regional title. So it's a bit bigger than just a state title. And my number one platform right now is having to do with reduce, reusing and recycling and helping out the environment through crayon awareness. All right. Gianna May. I'm Miss Pacific Ocean and I'm in the same organization as Jay does. And I have the same platform as Jay. We're in the same organization and just want to stop and help the crayon awareness. How did you come up with the idea? With joining the pageant? Yeah. Did you want to go first or? Okay. So I decided to do the Miss Earth pageant because it's like no other. It has to do with a lot of girl empowerment and taking up a cause that a girl can really connect with. And that was my main thing with this pageant. Well I always wanted to do pageants because I always see my friends wearing crowns and sashes and I thought oh maybe it'd be cool to try something new. But when I actually figured out what pageants are I realized there's so much more than just in God. So I just wanted to do more and help the community. So it's a lot of responsibility. So you always going to be busy right from now on. No stop. So tell me about you being the captain of the soccer team. Tell me a little bit about that. Well I play for Nemesis Soccer Academy and I'm in 2009 player pool. I am one of the three captains along with my friends Ava and Avery. Thank goodness I can never do it without them. It takes hard work and dedication but it's really all worth it. That is true. So you guys are very passionate about making a difference with the community and the crayon issue. So what's up with this issue and tell us how it got started. You want to go first. Yeah. Yeah. So do you guys ever wonder what happens with crayons after your kids use them at an IHOP or Denny's or something to be honest. Doesn't cross our mind off the bat. So that's the main issue. No one ever takes into consideration what happens with these crayons. People just throw them away and this actually creates a big sludge in our landfills that takes 90 years to degrade in our environment. So with the crayon collection program this organization in particular recycles crayons and brings them into low income school areas and the other program that I work with is the crayon initiative and they recycle these crayons and make them into new ones and they bring them into children's hospitals so kids can color. So that's the whole purpose of reduce, reuse and recycle. Exactly. Wow. I'm glad you told me that I was thrown by some way. So I'm learning today. I won't do that anymore. So Gianna May, so tell us more about how someone could get involved with this crayon initiative like if where they could start. Well first of all they could come to us and maybe they could help us with all of the stuff we're trying to do. Sounds great. So what about me if I go to a restaurant that sometimes you know I haven't seen a seven years old girl when we go to a restaurant they're always giving this crayon and we use it but we just leave it there and we just take off go home. I don't know what to do with that. So with the crayon initiative in particular we have these cute little boxes that we place in schools and in restaurants so when the children are done playing and coloring with their crayons and stuff they can put them in these boxes and we ship them off to the organization. So that come into the organization or all that come into a place here in Hawaii and then from there they do distribution locally. It goes to the organization in California which is the crayon initiative program. So if there is any way that it's going to be right here locally so it doesn't go all the way to California stay within Hawaii and then you got to do the distribution right here in Hawaii. And that's what we're working towards in the future. We just started with this program and it's so amazing but hopefully with enough help we can do more locally like programs here. Sounds great. So Jade you've got involved with this and efforts to save mother nature. Tell us more and what what is the efforts to save mother nature. How are the impacts? So far I have talked to my ROTC company at Radford High School about what they can do to promote more change with the environment. A lot of people are completely oblivious to something as small as crayons because it may seem silly at first until you really recognize what's going on. So this crayon is made out of wax? Parfong wax. So it doesn't... It's really really hard to degrade in our environment and it takes 90 years. 90 years. Exactly. Wow that's unbelievable. A century nearly. Exactly. Well we're quite proud of you because this is a sustainability issue and one of the factors of that is quality of environment and bringing healthy communities which is public health. That's one of my areas. What I found fascinating is the three pillars in sustainability, economics, environment and social which is people, planet and profits and that you guys are affecting in the fact that you're doing reduce reuse, recycle. So I thought that was fascinating how it fits the three pillars of sustainability. So you're very proud of yourself. How do you feel about contributing to healthy communities, Tiana? May? Well I really want to have healthy communities. It can really affect mother nature and animals that live in it. So I just want to keep it healthy. Right. Tiana May, I want to know a little bit about what school you go to and why do you classmate thinking about you taking over this very huge task in reducing recycle and reducing the crayons. I go to Manana Elementary School in Pearl City and my friends think it's funny just because I'm playing with crayons but they really don't know is that we're actually helping the community. My teacher thinks it's a really big difference and she's really proud of me and the other people that are helping. Wow that's great. The other thing is now we're getting art back into the school with the crayons. How do you feel about that Jade? Well growing up art was a really big program for me especially since I was raised here at Hickam Elementary. So art really helped me connect and really allowed me to channel my emotions that were going on at the time as like sixth grader. So it feels really nice to just give back to community and have kids be educated about topics that directly affect them with crayons. And how do you feel about having more art in school? I would love to have art because I don't really like math. However because there's more art available through your CRAN initiative, having art does increase math scores, science, all the subject so doing art will make you like math more. Well I love spray painting so hopefully we can do some kind of recycle with spray paint. I wouldn't know more about Miss Earth Paging. So tell me more about that and the difference between Miss Earth and some other Paging organization. So with Miss Earth organization in particular our main motto is beauties with a cause. So you don't see many pageants that are really just advocating for something and have these just empowered women just fighting for these causes that are near and dear to their hearts. So I'm excited for Nationals because I get to speak on this platform of CRAN initiative. How do you feel about Nationals coming up? I'm super excited and super nervous. So tell me where the Nationals is going to be. It's going to be in Las Vegas. Oh wow. Mine is July 1st I believe and I believe yours is in Washington. Yes. Wow all the way to Washington. Take me. Yes. Pack you in the suitcase. So now your initiative is taking you more to the mainland. How do you feel about that and contributing to the platforms in the mainland? Well I really like doing that because I want everybody to know why CRAN is our country and how we can speak for the people that are helping. I want to talk I want to talk about what in the community how we're going to get people right here in Hawaii. I know the main headquarter for these organizations in California but how we're going to get businesses here in Hawaii to support the cause of the CRAN recycle and reuse. Simply by educating the community more I believe the target audience for the mass amount of change that we can promote is through schools. So if we set up boxes and drives at schools and restaurants I believe we can create the most change here in Hawaii. Well I'm going to tell you I used to work when I was like going to high school I used to work for the Crayola company. Really? I did. As a student right and the company never said anything about this product recycle is going to stay in the landfill for so many years. Now that you talk about that I kind of think way back when I used to work for them. This company who created Crayola are there try to remodify or reuse the Crayola or they're trying to create the product that is about that credible? I'm actually not sure and I don't think it's safe for me to talk about that especially if I don't know in particular. Yeah. However I have seen articles where Crayola has came out and encouraged their consumers to go to these organizations and recycle. Okay. Sounds good. And so as far as reduce, reuse, recycle, how do you feel about this issue with the crayons? Like give us more information. I really just want to help our community. I don't want it to be a bad place. Like if it can affect people and homes I just don't want to affect. That's good because what goes in the drain goes in the landfill right and the ocean which you guys aren't miss Pacific Ocean. So we want to keep our ocean clean. That's great. And we're going to show these great and wonderful video and then we're going to take a break. And after the break we're going to come back and continue talking about reduce, reuse, recycle or crayons. My daughter was two years old and we kept going to restaurants and I'd noticed the crayons would come in for her and she'd use them for just a couple minutes and then they'd get thrown away. And it just seemed crazy to me that good crayons like that are going in the bin. So I decided to do some research and learn that restaurants throw away 150 million crayons per year. Meanwhile, little known fact, crayons don't decompose. And then I also learned that teachers are spending their own personal earnings about $900 per year to fill their classrooms with school supplies. So I started the crayon collection. The crayon collection is the sustainable model where we ask restaurants to collect the crayons that kids leave behind when they die now. Then we pair that restaurant with a school within five miles of their location and that school comes once per month and picks up over a thousand like new crayons. Then we provide that same school with a full art education program that revolves around these crayons. The reason for that is that art education has been eliminated in many schools, even though it's been proven that kids with access to the arts perform better in all subjects including math, English, history. And we want to raise awareness for these teachers not needing to spend their money anymore. We don't think this is fair. Kids and families can get involved anywhere in America. All you need to do is collect your crayons and put them in a bin and then donate them to a local school. All this can be found at crayoncollection.org. Please consider making a donation to crayon collection. There's no reason why a child shouldn't have a crayon and there's no reason why a child shouldn't have an art education program. Aloha, I'm Wendy Lo and I'm coming to you every other Tuesday at two o'clock live from Think Tech, Hawaii. And on our show, we talk about taking your health back. And what does that mean? It means mind, body and soul. Anything you can do that makes your body healthier and happier is what we're going to be talking about, whether it's spiritual health, mental health, fascia health, beautiful smile health, whatever it means, let's take healthy back. Aloha. Aloha, I'm Yukari Kunisue, the host of Konnichiwa, Hawaii, Japanese talk show on Think Tech, Hawaii. Konnichiwa, Hawaii is all Japanese broadcast show and streamed live on Think Tech at 2pm every other Monday. Thank you so much for watching our show. We look forward to seeing you then. I'm Yukari Kunisue. Mahalo. Welcome back to Hispanic Hawaii. We're here talking about reuse, reduce and recycle crayons with Jay and Deanna May. Welcome back. Thank you. All right. We show the video and they talk about how some of these crayons stand in the landfill for a long time. And I saw some boxes that they take to different places. Are you using those boxes to collect those crayons here in Hawaii? Definitely. So I just set up my first box at my school. So the ultimate goal is to set up boxes at Denny's IHOP and these big hotels where people are using the most crayons. And on the screen, you can see the box that we use to collect these crayons. And after we collect them, we also pouch them and we ship them over so they can be reused in low income areas all throughout Hawaii. That's the biggest goal. So, Deanna May, how is it with students that you know of and how would you like other students to use these crayons? Well, I wouldn't want them to throw away because they really don't care about crayons. They just want to do art, but it's really important about how you use the crayons and what you do with them afterwards. And how do you see getting your fellow classmates or other schools more involved? I would want to do a speech or tell the principal to teach you a speech and tell him how crayons aren't a good thing for them. Wow. And the speech coming from you will be very effective because you'll be talking to your peers. That is great. Well, it's funny how I would like to get involved with your class and we brought here some crayolas. We want to give this to you because we want to participate and support you. So we are going to be part of your team if you accept that he's finding a way to help you to go back into the community and promote you to the school and to the business community. Thank you so much. You are cool. I used to color a lot. So I'm working for the company now I understand how the whole thing works. I still color as a teen, too. You find the coloring books in the stores. It's interesting and that some of them are so intricate. It's you know, different levels of especially at Target. I see them all the time in the dollar section. So now when you use this coloring on regular paper, can that paper be recycled or now that paper is not recycled because we use the crayola to draw in the paper. I believe the main issue is with degrading the crayon itself because it's so high in parfum wax in general. So if you color on paper, I'm pretty sure you can still recycle it. OK. So as far as what inspired you? So I didn't ask you, Jade, what how do you feel like getting your students, fellow students involved, other schools? Well, I did my first actual like speech, like Gianna said, with my ROTC cadets since I'm a Delta Company commander at Rapid High School. So it was kind of interesting to see my peers' reactions towards me talking about just crayons. They kind of looked at me sideways like I was crazy, but I knew it was for a great cause. And once they once I registered in their head that this is an actual issue and I talked about how it can't be degraded in the environment, they took it much more serious. Oh, good. And so as far as your suggestion, opinion or ideas, what about other businesses that could get involved or help on the back end as far as maybe they're not using the crayons and how they could help with your initiative of reduce, reuse, recycle? They can always help. I would say that the more that they look into big companies like the crayon initiative and the crayon collection progress, you can really just promote that change in the community if you just step in and educate yourself. I just want to know where you get time to be. The company commander at the ROTC help with collection of crayons, be the least specific ocean. What other program do you do? A new track and field. So right after this, I probably have practice. You have practice. Wow. And that's why she's so fit. That's beautiful. So Gianna, may I like to ask you the same thing? What's your ideas or suggestions for businesses to help out on the back end of this initiative with the crayons? They could always help, like Jade said, and maybe she just try and get them involved, even though they don't use the crayons. Maybe they could just do something little to help. And what would be something little that they could do? Well, maybe give us more crayons so that we can recycle. Oh, OK. There you go. Give us more crayons. And how about maybe some money, too? Or when they give us the crayons, it goes back to the low income areas that can't afford things like this. So what is the possibility that you can maybe go to Walmart, KMR, Target, all these places that sell the crayon? The possibility is certainly high, I believe. You we just need the manpower to go into these big organizations because the island is so big. Exactly. So it might take some legislation. So have you, Jade, yourself, since you've been in a couple of pageants, have you gone to the Capitol on any legislative issues yet? Not yet for this particular issue. Oh. But it's coming. Oh. So let's all together raise the voice and support this and go send email to Governor Iggy so he can maybe get involved with his program. This is great. Exactly. I mean, it's just amazing how when I saw the video myself, I was like, oh, I just assumed that the store recycled the crayons. I didn't know that they threw away each and every one. So I think it's great that you started getting and involved this initiative locally. But yeah, like Richard said, we like to see how we can do more here versus sending so many crayons back to the U.S. for the recycling. And there are a lot of people that are entrepreneurs here. So maybe that might be an area that you guys might look into. Some entrepreneurs here might be involved in a new business. Let us know. We had to help. We almost run out of time. So if you have any recommendation, any final thought that you want to tell the audience, please tell us now. Look out for the boxes. And if you see a box, put your crayons in them because it goes to a really, really great cause. Just help the community try not to throw a lot of crayons away and just recycle them. So before we leave, I want to ask you two, how can we change and modify somebody's mentality? You said, no, I really don't care. I just want to throw things away. Honestly, before entering this pageant, I had the same mentality. It's all about me and I don't really care about what goes on. But after they, after I educated myself about this topic, I really found out how it directly affected me and how I just needed to come out of my own little bubble and really do something that impacts the environment. Because, you know, you always going to have some kind of resistance. Somebody always going to be like, I don't want to do that. I don't want to support your class. And we have to find a way to try to convince that person that it's not only good for the environment, but we give it back to the community. How would you face somebody who tell you, no, I don't want to support you? Well, maybe we could tell them a lot of causes that it could do or the damage it could do to their neighborhood or community. Wow, that's wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for your thoughts. I think you guys are both advancing this initiative as we speak right now. All right, we want to say thank you to Paul for you to come by and help us to understand this program about reduce, reuse and recycle. This is critical and it's important to me because I'm a father and a daughter at home and we always buy the crayons and we didn't know what to do. We just throw it away now that you help us to understand the issues and the concerns that we're going to support you all the way. And we want to wish you good luck and you are coming to competition. You're going to go to Las Vegas in Washington, D.C. So be prepared because I think it's called out there. Good luck girls. All right. Once again, thank you for coming and you can come by again anytime you wanted to give us on a date or how you do it within this program. Thank you. All right, we want to say thank you so much for watching Hispanii Hawaii and don't forget you can get involved in this cause, hoping to recycle, reuse the crayons and we can get the community involved but everything started within oneself. So we want to say thank you so much for watching Hispanii Hawaii and don't forget you can rewatch this program at any time. I think take Hawaii.com and many other program. Gracias y hasta luego.