Waste conscious lifestyle

By Naoshi Uchida | February 10, 2020

Hello everyone! Let me start with asking a question to you today. How much paper towels are consumed at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2017? Some of you might have graduated from, so let’s do a wild guess. I would like to answer the question in the middle of the blog.

Today’s topic is waste. Have you heard the word “zero-waste”? It’s a type of lifestyle pursuing to be no waste at all through your daily life. Its aim is not only minimizing the waste, but also to be more conscious about the ethical and environmental aspects. It’s a movement of sustainable lifestyle.

“Zero-waste” can be done personally or as an organization. For instance, the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa released announcement to be a “zero-waste” facility in October, 2017. They are not a complete “zero-waste” facility, but they are focusing on minimizing the amount of disposing paper cups and disposable utensils. To answer the question posed earlier, UH Mānoa uses 21 tons of paper towels annually!! This cost was more than $98,000 in 2016, and paper towels alone created enough waste to cover 2,121 miles (nearly the distance from Hawaiʻi to California).

Honolulu Myohoji is not a zero-waste facility, but we are working on a few projects. One of the projects is to demolish a restroom facility by the river. Our temple is right by the Nuuanu stream, and having toilet facilities might affect the quality of the river. It is not good from a spiritual point of view as well. Another thing we do often is to share food to homeless people. We sometimes get more food than we can finish through events. We always donate these foods to homeless people.

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