Three Everyday Problems Locals Have to Deal With in Hawaii

[Music] so even though I grew up in Hawaii and have lived here most of my life there are still problems that I just cannot figure out everyday problems that honestly I don't know if there is a solution and so like any good local I'm asking you can [Music] outai now while this video may seem like three separate rants I assure you I am just looking for Solutions so whether you're in Hawai or you've moved away or you live somewhere else if you have any ideas that could help me solve these problems please let me know in the comments below because I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person here who's dealing with these Hawaii problems okay so problem number one what do you do with all of those reusable shopping bags so back in July of 2015 honlulu banned the use of plastic shopping bags as a means to curb the littering problem now over the years the bags have transformed before we could use recyclable bags but they still had the handles and nowadays none of the stores have them what this means for locals is that anytime you go into a grocery store or somewhere like Longs you got to bring your own bag or you have to buy a bag if you forget and maybe the more indirect result of that has been the accumulation of these Reus usable shopping bags maybe you're like my family and just over the years you've accumulated them either as gifts from people who thought they would be a good idea maybe in the beginning of this whole thing or you've just forgotten enough times when you go to the grocery store but over the years you start accumulating these bags I mean now we have at least two dozen that are stuffed under our kitchen sink we got at least six in our car I got spares in my back backpack I got a few at work just in case I don't know what to do with all these bags now I remember back in the day when we used to have the actual plastic shopping bags what we used to do is we used to fold them into you know the little triangles and then you would just deposit them into one plastic bag and it would accumulate over time but you could store hundreds of these things but now with these reusable bags you can't really fold them very well and you can't really store them except just kind of in a pile so what's the solution just throwing them away so I get the sentiment of wanting to use reusable shopping bags I get the sentiment behind that I just don't know what to do with my bags so if anyone has any ideas creative ideas how many they keep in stock maybe they only limited to like 10 in their house please let me know because like I said we are being overrun by these bags all right so problem number two what is the best way to recycle those recyclables particularly the aluminum cans and the bottles so Hawaii's deposit beverage container program started back in January of 200 and5 basically it would be a 5cent deposit on all cans and you know soda bottles other types of glass bottles you would pay that up front in the store and then when you redeem it back when you recycle it you would get your 5 cents back now in theory that's a wonderful idea right you have less litter it sort of incentiv IES financially people to want to recycle but there's been several problems that I've found over the years and maybe this wasn't foreseen but I can tell you right now if you just look around I'm not sure this program is working as we approach certain bottles here we got the one plastic bottle and we got another water bottle back there I think at the heart of it it's really hard to go to some of these redemption centers I found it very difficult to make the time to actually go out to some of these places because they're not easily accessible in my opinion or maybe I should rephrase that and just state that I wish it was easier to recycle I remember back before the program back with my grandpa we used to save cans and I would go into his backyard and I would smash the cans and then we would go to the recycling place and it was behind Longs in Koh and we would load the cans up the guy would weigh all the cans and he would pay my grandpa and my grandpa let me keep all the money there is no need for any external recycling incentive we just did it I mean hey I worked hard for those cans you know I have to smash them and sometimes you know the contents will get all over my hands I have to kind of dirty but these days it seems like it's very difficult to make it out to the redemption centers especially if you only have a dozen or so cans I mean we're not like a heavy soda drinker so when we buy a 12pack or maybe a 24 pack are we just going to go down to the Redemption Center for a dozen cans and at these redemption centers they basically just weigh it I mean if you've been to one here in Hawaii you know there's usually a considerable line depends on what time of the day you go but you have to separate your cans from your plastic bottles from your glass bottles and and then you drag the trash can and the guy goes up and he weighs it and just based off of the weight that's what they pay you it's not really a one for one exchange where for every can you get 5 cents now you can ask for them to count it individually but you're talking about bringing dozens and dozens of cans and if you're like me you just want to get out of there so I don't know if I want to sit there and watch the guy count I don't think they take your word for it if you count it ahead of time and you just tell them oh yeah this is like 300 cans I don't think they take your word for it so you're just going to have to stand there and watch them recount everything and hope that you get your 5 cents per can but the problem becomes when you live in a condo like some of these condos over here can you I mean seriously you can imagine that condo over there if you're accumulating cans over time what are you supposed to do with them you're going to buy three separate trash cans and put them in your condo to a little tight but if you're going to store your cans in plastic bags and just keep them in the kitchen until you're ready to go unless you clean them absolutely perfectly it's just going to attract the bugs now of course no one is discouraging anyone from recycling it in a community collection but then you lose out on your 5 cents and I don't know it seems like kind of misses the point so what does that typically mean for these cans and bottles that we're supposed to be recycling well unfortunately it means usually the trash and I hate that that happens but I don't see any alternative which is why I'm asking for Solutions here because other than us storing these cans over time in our small place and then going to the redemption centers when we have enough and makes the trip worth it I I I don't know any other way and the thing is I know that we're not the only household that is trying to figure out what to do with this issue for fiscal year 2122 there was $22.5 Million worth of un redeemed deposits which means that that's a lot of cans and bottles and and glass bottles that are not being returned for that money and further still the program has a lot of other issues particularly pointed out by the audit that was conducted with basically everything being self-reporting which in and of itself is a little sketchy now all that to say I just wish they made it easier to recycle in Hawaii I wish they made it easier so that you could recycle bottles and cans as you get them in smaller amounts rather than having to accumulate a whole bunch and then you go drive down now know that there are these things called reverse vending machines where you go to a store it looks kind of like a vending machine but you put the cans or bottles in one at a time and you just get the money right so it's it's a one for one thing it's not weade it's just you put one Cannon you get like 5 cents credit and then when you're done you just get all the money right there and sure maybe the machines will break over time and there will be a general maintenance cost but for me it would make recycling a whole lot easier for your everyday person I mean isn't that the whole point and not only that if we have a lot of these machines that need maintenance maybe that's a field or a trade that we could start training people to be part of so that just like elevators that need fixing escalators that need fixing if these Redemption machines these reverse Redemption machines need fixing that and hey we know that they're going to break and here's this career path that if you're interested in we need that you could be a part of and before we say how much a reverse vending machine program might cost let's be real I think the overall recycling program loses money I mean you know how many green glass bottles we accumulate here in Hawaii and do you know where all that glass goes they got to ship it and that costs money and that loses money I mean 5 cents not going to pay for all of that and so I just hop that they could just make it easier for us to put my can in and just get the 5 cents and be done and I remember when my workplace used to actually have one of these machines so I know it's possible it's just I don't know why they discontinued it so baring reverse vending machines does anyone have a solution for how to recycle better how to store your cans better or is this just unsolvable woo I didn't realize how long that discussion was but hope you can tell it's it's been a big problem for for me and my family just trying to figure out how the heck to do that but the third and final problem and this is out of my own element so I that's again really why I'm asking for advice here what is the best way to guarantee that you won't have sand back in your car or your house after you go to the beach I can't figure it out I I I just can't now if you've been following my channel for a while you know that I am not really a beach boy I'm not really a fan of the beach I like looking out at the ocean I like looking out at the ocean but in terms of going into the water and and playing it's not really been my thing but like any good dad I do the things that my kids love and so we've been going to the beach and I've noticed that every single time we go to the beach there is sand on the seat sand on the ground sand in the trunk sand when we get back home it's in the kitchen it's in the bathtub it's in the sink it's on the bathroom floor I just don't know how to prevent sand from getting in our place no matter how much we seem to shower the kids no matter how much I seem to shower myself and you know what I'm talking about you know getting the sand off the ankles I I can't get all of it I don't understand understand how that's even possible now I'm sure longtime Beach people have just accepted that yeah you know what sand just going to get in my car maybe they just accepted that but I figured there's got to be a way to get the sand out is it the water that we're showering with that's that's dirty that has sand in it or is it in the air is the sand in the air so that even after I shower off and shower off the boys the air the wind just blows sand back on our clothes I don't know what it is but I feel like we just accumulate so much sand and then 2 days later there it is on my chair and I'm like where did that come from and it's important to me because I try to have a clean place I'm I'm not like a super clean person I mean you know I don't mind walking over monkey po pod things that's fine and you know under my slipper is going to have all those little sticky seeds that's fine I can just you know go like that and just take them off so I'm not like a super clean like everything's got to be clean but sometimes it's just kind of discouraging you know like how do you get rid of this sand and how do you make sure that I don't have to end up vacuuming it so to all those Beach Boys and beach girls if you can offer any solution that would be tremendously helpful because I just don't know where the Sand's coming from and it would be nice to just come home from the beach clean car clean bathroom clean carpet clean floor and then and just go take a nap and so yes believe it or not it is possible to live in a place your entire life and not know how to solve certain daily problems in the end I feel like I just tolerate them and they continue but I know that there are smart people out there people who have figured it out that through life experience through life hacks they've just figured out a way around these problems and so I'm asking for your help I'm asking for those people's help because there's got to be a better way my dad used to always teach us that if you don't know something you just got to go out there and ask and maybe it's small kind shame but hey there's probably people out there who also are asking themselves the same questions when I was teaching at a university you can just feel it when you're in front of the classroom and there's a whole bunch of students and you say okay any questions and you know that there are like one or two students that are just burning up inside they just want to ask a question but they're so ashamed and so usually what I ended up doing was I would wait a little while and that's hard to do cuz silence in front of a group is very difficult to manage see it feels kind of awkward now it's just like 2 seconds imagine like 10 seconds of Silence it starts to get like awkward and and bubbly but it's like that an anxiety it kind of pushes those students to ask the questions and as soon as they ask the questions you can feel like everybody like Rel relax a little bit because that anxiety and that tension is gone but also I'm pretty sure like half of them were thinking the same question anyway and so likewise I'm thinking if I just ask the questions without offering any solutions but just asking the questions and presenting the problems I'm sure that there are other people out there here maybe not on the ship but there there's other people out here who probably are experiencing the same thing and they don't know how to deal with this you know and again these are not you know super serious problems but they're enough where I would just love to figure out the best way to overcome them to to solve these problems and yeah just so I don't have to tolerate them anymore so if you have any solutions please let me know in the comments below if these problems are also relatable please let me know in the comments below thanks for watching and Aloha but seriously if you know any solutions please please let me know hell hello hello hello from Hawai

Channel: Hello From Hawaii

Views: 9,390

Keywords: living in hawaii, Life in hawaii, what is it like in Hawaii, Moving to hawaii, hello from hawaii, hawaii, oahu, honolulu, hawaii life, life on hawaii, hawaiian life

Id: J2cFLCXc7lI

Length: 16min 12sec (972 seconds)

Published: Tue May 28 2024