UH Hilo geography major Devin Brown interns at Zero Waste Hawaiʻi, plans sustainable tableware system for campus events
Devin Brown is working with a community organization to develop a sustainable “dish library” on campus for event planners to utilize instead of purchasing disposable paper and plastic tableware that end up in the landfill.
By Nāpua Iolana Bicoy/UH Hilo Stories.
For his capstone project connected to a national leadership program, a geography student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo is developing a plan to create a sustainable “dish library” on campus for event planners to utilize instead of purchasing disposable paper and plastic tableware that end up in the landfill.
“We have a lot of events on campus that happen every day and the majority of them involve food,” says Devin Brown. “The majority of people will go and buy paper plates or disposable forks for their events, just because it’s more convenient that way.” But that just adds more waste to the island’s landfill.
- Watch UH Hilo Stories interview with Devin Brown about his capstone project (video at right).
Expecting to graduate next spring, Brown, who hails from Seattle, Washington, is majoring in geography and environmental science with a minor in geology, along with earning certificates in environmental studies and planning. He says his main focus in his studies is learning about Earth and its ecosystems, “how they function and more specifically how humans interact with those systems, and how humans can then build resilience into the systems to better our lives. These are systems which our lives depend on in the first place.”
It takes a community
Brown’s internship project on sustainable tableware is made possible through several community-based and national nonprofit and government groups.
It starts with Brown being a Bonner Leader, a title for students participating in the Bonner Program, a four-year nationwide program that gives college students a paid opportunity to gain leadership and networking skills through engaging with the local community. Bonner Leaders are students enrolled at the university who commit to paid positions of 8 to 10 hours per week, which includes leadership training and on-site work with community organizations. Bonner Leaders are committed to the program for their four years of study at the university. Brown’s sustainable tableware plan is his capstone project for the Bonner Program.
The Bonner Program, along with some state funding, is supporting Brown’s paid internship at Zero Waste Hawaiʻi, a local nonprofit with a mission to help Hawaiʻi Island communities achieve zero waste. ZWHI is collaborating with the county’s Department of Environmental Management on an islandwide project called the Hilo Reusable Foodware System. Brown’s project is part of this islandwide foodware project.
Brown explains the urgency of starting zero waste programs on Hawaiʻi Island.
“There’s a lot of waste that’s generated at the university and in Hilo,” Brown explains. “Our landfills are full. So we truck all of our garbage over to the Kona side. It’s about 160 tons of trash gets trucked from Hilo to Kona almost every day.”
Implementing his dish library would decrease the amount of waste produced by UH Hilo, and in turn, lower the waste stream going over to the Kona landfill.
“In Hawaiʻi, we don’t have the same privileges as on the mainland where we get to just send our trash super far away where no one’s living,” says Brown. “Everywhere on our island there’s communities and people thriving. We have limited space.”
Building his skillset
Brown says he’s had to jump through a lot of bureaucratic hoops in order to get his sustainability tableware project “in people’s brains and up and running,” even as a pilot project. The internship calls for lots of interaction with other people and identifying whether he needs to write a proposal or obtain a permit for his project. He is required to communicate with the Department of Health to ensure he’s following their standards.
“I didn’t think it would be so much of that, which was really surprising to me,” says Brown. “But it’s been a really good learning curve, being able to learn those types of things, and add that to my skillset.”
Brown’s future plans, as he gets closer to graduation, is to pass down his project to upcoming juniors and seniors in the hopes that it continues. He also hopes that the campus dish library inspires the creation and implementation of other sustainability projects, such as with take-out containers and other disposables, at UH Hilo.
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Story and video by Nāpua Iolana Bicoy, a Hawaiian studies major at UH Hilo. Susan Enright, editor of UH Hilo Stories, contributed.
