Island Innovation Proposals
Island Innovation Proposal
Concept:
Create hands-on opportunities for students and communities to learn how to become masters of sustainability by demonstrating that simple life styles encourage all of us to downsize, reduce living costs, reuse, recycle and recover resources.
Invite Hawaii preschool, K-12 and college students to learn how to build small off-the-grid portable housing units with the aid of local construction, renewable energy companies and the Hawaii military sustainability command. The students would be taught to create a home on a 8.5’ x 24’ trailers which would not require a building permit. The home would be surrounded by aquaponics organic food producing systems using casket liners, old bathtubs, and other scrap materials that normally end up in landfills. The housing and aquaponics units would be powered by photovoltaic and solar panels. The unit would also include exterior rain catchment barrels, reverse osmosis and charcoal filters, solar toilets, a simple grey water treatment system, and space for square foot gardens and vertical growing towers. Use shredded tires as a part of potting mix in sq. foot gardens. Shred the plastic found on beaches and repurpose them for housing and aquaponics projects. Create systems for drug and alcohol free low income families and homeless Hawaii veterans.
The affordable housing unit would help communities prepare for emergencies, evacuations and encourage a healthy, organic, less polluting lifestyle. The students could also create worm farms to grow feed for fish in the aquaponics system, using vermicast compost and worm tea as organic fertilizer. Students would be encouraged to use innovative STEM and entrepreneur skills to reduce the cost of the unit and to increase its effectiveness.
The unit would allow students to demonstrate to the public how to achieve a simple, sustainable life style by using vertical farming methods with plastic containers and bottles etc. The students would be taught to use digital media to document progress as they build systems, thus creating DOE learning center curriculum.
Create a social media website called hawaiisustainability.com to share sustainability ideas and projects. Emergency preparedness. Turn yard waste from Hawaiian Earth into fertile compost for sq. foot gardens. Sell on Kahuku.org. Tie in federal workforce program. Make signage of process. Wall becomes “powerpoint”. Wall in shop showcases individual student innovation and CTE skills. Integrate CTE skills with student accomplishments with overlaying photos.
http://standardstoolkit.k12.hi.us/index.html
Before and after school programs. US Wildlife service. Long term program tie in with other programs. Consolidate outcomes.
Ancient Hawaiians were acknowledged by early European explorers as the original masters of sustainability. Our system will help re-create ancient sustainable living methods while using modern technology. Create working models of actual ancient Hawaiian fishponds on a small scale to show how they work. (Heeia, Kahalu’u, Kualoa, Kaneohe, etc). Surround them in a sustainability garden with petroglyphs, native plants, etc. using waste materials.
Organization:
We have spent the last 3 years organizing innovative renewable energy education through KREIC (renewable-resource.com) and Halau Haloa, HawaiiSustainability.com, HawaiiKidsMedia.com, Kokua Hawaii Foundation, BYU Hawaii Sustainability program, Na Kamalei pre-school, Kahuku High & Intermediate, Sunetric, Ohana Greenhouse, containerstoragehawaii.com, Kahuku First Wind, DOE, Olomana Gardens, Waimanalo Feed Supply, Windward Community College, Hawaii State Hospital, 13 Moons Farm, Aquapono. etc.
Benefits for students:
Provides opportunities for senior projects, practical training, prizes, scholarships, college enrollment, community service, self-sufficiency; state, federal and international recognition.
Benefits for community recipients:
Encourages self-sufficiency, emergency preparedness, reduce dependence on the grid and the need for expensive housing. Replace the need for subsidized meals (SNAP) with a new perpetual source of organic food, fish, purified water and natural medicine. Community can learn about ancient Hawaiian sustainability, lower the cost of food ($3,000 one time purchase of aquaponics system vs. half million dollars worth of food consumed over a lifetime), lower the cost to travel to purchase food (consume less gas), use less packaging, waste less.. Helps the community transition from imported processed foods to fresh local organic produce and fosters a healthier lifestyle. Over 42% of America’s youth are now obese, a fact that deeply concerns the military since they are unable to recruit candidates that are overweight.
Benefits for teachers:
Provides practical, updated training and support from industry leaders, leading edge innovation in technology, all training conforms with DOE standards, CTE, STEM, etc
Benefits for industry partners and entrepreneur mentors:
Supply them with trained interns while they are still high school students. Learn and implement latest renewable energy technologies.
Benefits for sponsoring corporations:
Build aquaponics systems for corporations so they can also share with the public how to live a more healthy, less wasteful and productive means of living and doing business through aquaponics.
Benefits for sponsors and supporters:
Work with Home Depot or Lowes, Malaekahana, Sunetric, Kahuku Film Club, Hawaii military sustainability command, ‘Olelo, FEMA, google, Kokua Hawaii Foundation, Blue Planet Foundation, Re-use Hawaii, eatlocalhawaii.org, chefann.com, USDA, Community-Supported Agriculture, Youth Conservation Corps, Michelle Obama’s letsmove.gov, etc. Advertise their support on car wraps on our model homes and aquaponics systems. Provide interns and researchers for renewable energy companies, provide digital media content for sponsors.
Projects:
Build 4 trailers near the Kahuku High & Intermediate campus, one with an off-the-grid home, one with an aquaponics system, one with worm farm and chicken farm, square foot gardens, a Sopogy renewable energy demonstration trailer, all with photovoltaics to showcase at different schools, farmer’s markets, trade shows. Also pack additional tents, displays, signage, tables, educational materials, digital media equipment and chairs. Grind plastic on beach into usable products, use net pods in aquaponics. Use charcoal for water filters.
Mission:
Create hands-on learning opportunities for students and communities to promote simpler and greener lifestyles that will reduce living costs by reusing, recycling, and recovering resources. Involve youth in digital media and position them to become teachers of sustainability through becoming proficient video producers as they become innovative masters of sustainability themselves. Use social media programs and kahuku.org to share sustainability videos and products.
Please describe your innovation?
This innovation harnesses students’ passion and vision for their futures to showcase solutions to the uniquely high cost of living challenging young island residents. Invite K-12, college students and the community to collaborate, design and build low cost tiny homes and retrofitted school buses that would be used as shelters which would integrate aquaponic organic food producing systems, photovoltaics, solar panels, and worm farms. All would be aligned to the Hawaii DOE’s Career Technology and Engineering standards. Build 4 trailers near the Kahuku High & Intermediate campus: One with a tiny off-the-grid home; One with an aquaponics system; One with a worm and chicken farm and square foot garden; One with a Sunetrics renewable energy demonstration trailer, all powered with photovoltaics to showcase at different schools, farmer’s markets, trade shows. Include tents, displays, banners of each student’s project, tables, educational materials and videos for sustainability presentations.
What is the problem or situation that your innovation seeks to address?
Life in Hawaii is becoming less sustainable due to the lack of locally grown food, the poor economy, the high cost of fuel, the cost and availability of low-cost housing, expensive utilities, and our growing dependence on imported and unhealthy processed food. The youth of this island are the future and have inherited all our challenges. As they produce educational videos they will learn: to address the importance of growing healthy organic food in our own backyards using aquaponics systems that use 95% less water and use ten times less space than farming in dirt. They will also learn to see how we can use less energy in our homes by downsizing unnecessary items that waste our limited resources and time. Only one shipping company is used to import 95% of all foods entering the island. This project seeks to provide the community the necessary education to become self-sustainable. To provide the knowledge and experience to provide healthy foods to families for generations to come.
What effort have you made to test out your new idea?
We have spent the last three years organizing, documenting, and filming innovative renewable energy education programs through Kahuku Renewable Energy Innovation Center and Halau Haloa, Kahuku First Wind, HawaiiKidsMedia.com, Kokua Hawaii Foundation, Sunetric, DOE, BYU Hawaii University, Olomana Gardens, Waimanalo Feed Supply, Windward Community College, Hawaii State Hospital, Na Kamalei pre-school, and so on. Our Kahuku Sustainability Club of twenty members has built two aquaponics systems inside the Kahuku High & Intermediate School CTE class, and we are designing worm farms and square foot gardens to expand our program. We have visited five aquaponics programs on Oahu. We partnered with Kahuku First Wind and produced the only documentary on First Wind’s installation at Kahuku. They requested a twenty year partnership with our science students. Using the PBS student news model, Hiki No, our students have been trained to produce professional content product for TV broadcast.
What is particularly noteworthy or novel about your innovation?
Our youth have amazing creative potential for impacting the social consciousness if they are given media tools and support. Our youth face current and future environmental challenges, it is only fitting that they have the opportunity to discover innovative solutions. We want to provide the resources needed to assess, plan, implement, and evaluate sustainable living. The Department of Education’s standards for the CTE units and the US Common Core Standards are integrated into each unit plan of instruction. The students will explore innovative solutions to reduce waste and protect the environment. Partnerships with renewable energy companies will be solicited to provide internships and learning opportunities for K-12 students. Programs will be offered as after school opportunities for students and the school community. Use bus or trailer to collect food waste for portable worm farm, empty beverage containers, old cell phones, small batteries, etc.
What impact do you expect your innovation will have on the problem or situation described in the previous question?
We plan to lead by example and show that there are many creative ways to leave a small footprint on our world. The “Sustainable Living through Innovation” curriculum and alignment to the standards for project-based learning activities is designed for the students to find solutions to the environmental challenges we face. The youth viewer generated video’s on sustainability will be much more impactful with the youth as it will be produced from their point of view and their voice. The students will become the experts as they participate in researching their subject, writing script and editing the educational video, the social media marketing clips and helping to create video and written content in schools that have little current content in traditional text books on the subject of sustainability and renewable energy. Students create the content and learn as they go. Our motto: Innovate More, Depend Less.
What other community partners will you need if your innovation is to scale beyond your organization?
Sunetric, Kahuku First Wind, Hawaii Military Sustainability Command, ‘Olelo, FEMA, H-5, UH College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources, DBEDT, Kokua Hawaii Foundation, Blue Planet Foundation, Oahu Urban Garden Center, Home Depot, Lowes, Re-Use Hawaii, eatlocalhawaii.org, Kahuku Film Club, chefann.com, USDA, Sopogy, Community-Supported Agriculture, Malama Pupukea-Waialua, caretakers on Ko’olauloa fish ponds, Michelle Obama’s letsmove.gov, etc. Advertize their support on car wraps on our model homes and aquaponics systems. Provide interns and researchers for renewable energy companies, provide digital media content for sponsors. National Task Force on S.T.E.M. Education in Washington, DC. The alignment to the Hawaii Content & Performance Standards (HCPS III) and the US Common Core Standards is currently underway for S.T.E.M. education in Hawaii. A DOE task force has convened and is working to provide the aligned framework as part of the Race to The Top initiative.
Why are your organization, partners, and key personnel suited to take on this project?
Our organization is uniquely suited help foster ideas for solutions as we continuously develop new, innovative and practical methods of becoming more sustainable. We can’t afford to stand idlely by, continue to blame others or do nothing. Our keiki deserve more and our kupuna expect more of us. We all agree that our communities deserve a higher quality of life by encouraging healthier and more sustainable living environment. We need to discourage children from eating unhealthy fast food. If we do nothing to prevent this, then we can expect more than half of Hawaii’s youth to become obese and suffer from multiple yet preventable chronic conditions such as diabetes which will result in expensive and unsustainable health care costs. We agree that are growing too dependent on imported food not realizing that even a small disaster could severely challenge our way of life since only 5% of our food is grown on our islands and our oceans and beaches are continually being filled with trash.
Project Title
Protecting and Enriching Hawaii’s Precious Soil Using Waste Resources
Summary (Max 500 characters)
Due to shrinking water and arable land supplies caused by over-population, and the increasing energy cost to transport food to and within Hawaii, our people may eventually be forced to grow crops in their own homes and yards using very efficient farming methods that use less water. It is vital that young people begin learning, practicing and innovating methods of reducing, reusing and recycling waste resources as growing mediums to grow organic plants faster and more efficiently.
Please describe your innovation
(Max 1000 characters)
We plan to create a cross curricular sustainability program for Kahuku High & Intermediate students using our donated 2 acre agricultural site next to the campus. The core objectives of the program are to study, discover and share methods of creating rich compost soil that accelerates organic plant growth and reduces irrigation. Waste products used for composting will include discarded food and milk, pathogen-free sewage sludge pellets, shredded paper and discarded wood pallets burned to create biochar. Vermicast, worm tea, composted green waste, EM-1 micro-organisms (using waste milk, rice water, molasses), Bokashi fertilizer and glycerin would be introduced to explore effects on microbial growth compost production speed. Mycorrhizal fungi, fish droppings, peat moss, vermiculite might be added to enhance soil quality and water retention. We will explore the use of heat energy from the compost piles to heat a small greenhouse for sprout production.
What is the problem or situation that your innovation seeks to address?
Our innovations seeks to address Hawaii’s food dependence and vulnerability caused by our reliance on one shipping company to transport 90% of its food supply the lack of awareness among most people that our food source is vulnerable to politics and economics outside our control. Most people are so disconnected from their food sources that they don't realize how precarious the food situation is. We wish to educate our youth about the food supply and our potential food crisis. At the same time, we want to provide them with practical knowledge and tools for circumventing the problems. Future Hawaii lawns may display square foot gardens growing fruits and vegetables and aquaponic systems providing perpetual sources of organic food and clean water, rather than green lawns. In addition, growing food at home using enriched soil could help minimize the impact of a sudden pandemic, terrorist attack, or other disaster (hurricanes, tsunamis) that prevents access to centralized food sources. By educating our youth with our innovative program, we can shift Hawaii towards sustainability.
What effort have you made to test out your new idea
Teachers have received sustainability training from The Green House Hawaii, BYUH Sustainability Program, Olomana Gardens, Kolea Farms, McKinley High School’s Biochar program. Students in our agriculture, AVID and sustainability programs started a composting project in January 2012. They are sorting and weighing all liquid, food, tray, recyclable bottles and cans, refuseable waste from the school cafeteria each day, thus diverting the liquid and food waste from the dumpsters and putting it into compost piles (see graph). They maintain worm farms to add vermicast, worm tea, and worms to the compost piles. Students also add shredded paper and dried mulch. We are collecting used wood pallets, which normally end up in dumpsters, to create biochar. We have started a Green Team on campus to coordinate soil composting curriculum from science, culinary arts, AVID, agriculture and construction.
What is particularly noteworthy or novel about your innovation
We have discovered ways to tie in our sustainability initiatives, particularly those dealing with soil and energy, into the Hawaii Department of Education’s standards, and into the federal Green Ribbon School requirements. As students participate in our sustainability program, reducing, reusing and recycling will become habits. They will understand problems that our food supply faces and will acquire skills and knowledge on how to make rich organic soil to speed up plant growth and reduce water consumption, and how to grow food in their yards. Growing organic fruits and vegetables, and learning to prepare and eat them will alter the ways in which our young people view food. We believe this can help change the eating habits that have resulted in this generation's poorer health and lowered life expectancy.
What impact do you expect your innovation will have on the problem or situation described in the previous question
Diverting food waste minimizes the amount of rubbish being accumulated in landfills and also provides a free resource to enrich soils for healthy, organic food production. We would like to create rich, organic soil to transform our schools from the asphalt, 'prison yard' look to attractive edible schoolyards that can provide students with fresh, organic produce anytime they are hungry instead of being dependent on processed foods that are prepared miles away from the school cafeteria. Our innovations will help families in our community learn how to grow healthy plants quickly, affordably and easily from waste products that are readily available. We would like to grow healthy food in our own organic soil next to the cafeteria to save money and to provide an alternative to processed food. Creating rich organic soil could provide the foundation for growing and serving healthy food in cafeterias.
What other community partners will you need if your innovation is to scale beyond your organization
We invited Kahuku High alum Jack Johnson (Kokua Hawaii Foundation founder), General Michael J. Terry of the Hawaii Sustainability Command, officials from Ulupono Initiative, Malaekahana Hui and the City and County of Honolulu federal workforce program, and a Synagro plant manager to help kick start our green initiatives. On March 12, 2012, our school was selected and recognized by the State of Hawaii and Senator Hirono to be a Green Ribbon School. Our program has been enriched from the generous efforts of many community volunteers, students, teachers, custodial staff, and administrators, soldiers from the Hawaii Sustainability Command. We are consulting with waste management consultants from the US mainland and Canada in case we have the financial means to expand our program.
Why are your organization, partners, and key personnel suited to take on this project
Our sponsors, partners and key personnel are best suited for this project because they have a common goal of educating our youth and adults in methods that lead to a sustainable Hawaii. Many of these sponsors have expertise in sustainable agriculture and other systems to grow and maintain sustainable food sources. We have teachers excited and willing to introduce sustainability methods in to the STEM programs at our school. Glenn Martinez of Olomana Gardens has suggested we expand STEM to include Agriculture: STEAM. By including Hands-On-Training to our learning model, it becomes - HOT STEAM! Our high school advisors are using our program for students that need remedial help since students seem to relate better to real-life applications of STEM education. Counselors can refer students to do community service projects during the lunch hour in the cafeteria, even lock-out students confined in the cafeteria can help with our soil projects. Our goal is to have students teach sustainability and have the content distributed on ‘Olelo and youtube so we can share our curriculum and projects with as many students as possible. To expand our soil enrichment program, members of our green team are planning to take a masters program in sustainability.