YOU are the best community advocate! Please use the information on this page to teach and inspire others to do positive things for the community!

808 Cleanups gets invited to speak at schools and other venues. We’d love to feature active volunteers and community advocates just like YOU! Contact us today with the following information below!

• Days and times available
• Volunteer experience with 808 Cleanups, partners, etc.
• Teaching/speaking experience
• Special skills or interests related to stewardship

Littering/Illegal Dumping

808 Cleanups tackles everywhere Mauka to Makai, from the mountains to the sea. As bad as the ocean plastics and derelict nets are, by weight the largest source of debris thus far is locally based- on land. From the food/beverage waste littered everywhere, to abandoned appliances and cars, we find everything. A perfect storm of bad practices and poor policy decisions means that we have much to improve in the Islands of Hawaiʻi for reducing, reusing and processing these resource streams. However, we are confident that if we all work as team, we can solve these serious issues and provide a positive example of sustainability to the world!

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Get Involved with 808 Cleanups to Adopt a Site and Report Problem Areas. Your action in the field and data tracking in the 808 Cleanups App will be extremely helpful for us making critical policy changes at the City and State level. These changes truly come from the ground up, so we need everyone’s support for this to happen!

Pallet Bonfires

808 Cleanups believes that fires for cooking and enjoyment are a natural right for everyone. However, open fires or bonfires using shipping pallets are not only illegal, but a serious hazard to the public. Pallet bonfires leave behind sharp nails as well as shattered glass from bottles thrown into the fire. Pallet bonfires are almost always buried hot under the sand, sometimes staying hot for days as well as hiding the nails for unsuspecting people. Sand is a perfect environment for containing heat and allowing airflow. Please, never burn pallets, contain ALL fires, and Leave No Trace.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Speak up to people who may be planning a pallet bonfire, and share the Fire Information with them. Use the 808 Cleanups App and our social media to report pallet bonfire remnants. Help Adopt a Site and Get Involved in positive outreach. Contact Us to be a part of our nighttime outreach program.

Native Plant Restoration

Humanity’s impacts are not limited to trash; entire ecosystems have been altered over the centuries, mostly for the worse. The introduction of non-native plants and animals has led to the decimation and extinction of many native species. 808 Cleanups has multiple projects running to do full restoration of these spaces to encourage native plant growth and along with it, a return of endangered species such as the Hawaiian Yellow-Faced Bee. We uproot and cut back invasives, and many times that is all that’s need to give natives a fighting chance. Come join our efforts!

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Join us for regular cleanup events, check out our CALENDAR and see if invasive plant removals are part of the agenda for that event. Have a busy schedule and can’t make it to those events? Join our ADOPT A SITE program, we’ll provide you with the tools and training to do native plant restoration on YOUR schedule!

Reef Restoration

808 Cleanups includes underwater cleanups at some of the events, and many volunteers have adopted underwater sites that they clean on their own schedule. One of the big things we go after is fishing line. It’s not always small stuff either, sometimes yards and yards spooled out. This creates a huge entanglement hazard for sea creatures like our precious honu (sea turtle) and monk seals. Fishing line also damages sensitive coral reef polyps. Other things to clean up underwater include floating plastics, sunken debris, and derelict fishing gear caught on the reef. Whenever possible, we also implement projects to restore native limu (algae) and coral reefs.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Join us for events or adopt your own underwater site. Track your progress in the 808 Cleanups App. Site Adopters earn their very own tools from 808 Cleanups to tackle underwater debris, including knife rings and mesh bags for cutting and collecting derelict line and lead weights.

Marine Debris/Ocean Plastics

808 Cleanups has cleaned up literal TONS of ocean plastics hitting the shores of Hawaiʻi. These ocean plastics come from many sources both local and worldwide, with much of it coming from the commercial fishing industry. The full effects of these plastics in the environment are not fully understood, but they have made their way into even the most remote reaches of the planet. We know for certain they are ingested by animals, either outright killing them, or entering their bloodstream and moving all the way up the food chain to humans. We must stop the sources of these plastics, collect what’s out there, and transition to benign and beneficial alternatives.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Reduce your purchase of single-use plastics. Reuse and repair things to your best ability before buying new. Source your seafood from sustainable businesses. Get Involved with the 808 Cleanups Adopt a Site program to help remove what washes up. Track and organize efforts in the 808 Cleanups App.

Derelict Fishing Gear

808 Cleanups has removed additional TONS of these derelict nets over the years. They are coming from the commercial fishing industry; lost or illegally dumped in the open sea. These nets can do a lot of damage, entangling animals and killing them as well as damaging and endangering ships and crew. Many of these nets can float for years before making landfall. Once on land, they can weigh hundreds, sometimes thousands of pounds. It can be a massive effort to get it removed from the beach for waste processing, especially in remote and hazardous coastlines.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Vote with your wallets, source your seafood from sustainable fisheries. Get Involved and help remove these nets when they make landfall. Report nets floating in the open ocean or when they make landfall, and request special supplies like knives to handle these nets in the 808 Cleanups App.

Nature Tagging

808 Cleanups believes in the Leave No Trace principles, and we believe that natural objects should be left that way – natural. Spray paint and other man-made impressions do not belong on natural stone and wood. 808 Cleanups appreciates artistic expression, and will support respectful efforts (especially art murals in urban spaces, Contact Us for more information), but we believe nature looks quite beautiful in her natural state! Nature tagging was the original issue that spurred the creation of our 808 Cleanups group. Thankfully, it is more rare these days, but something to nip early whenever found.

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Please report nature tags you encounter in the 808 Cleanups App as well our social media. Reach out to us and get graffiti removal training! We use a biodegradable citrus-based remover and a conservative approach using water and soft bristles to restore these natural surfaces without damaging anything.

Working as a Team

At the end of the day, environmental issues always make a full circle back to people. We can recognize the problems, we can talk about the problems, but most importantly, do we ACT to solve the problems? Given the scope of environmental issues, we need to work as a team. We love working with a diverse group of partners. 808 Cleanups is about empowering YOU, everyday people, to take action big and small. We provide you with the tools to get the job done and to communicate and coordinate with others in your area. Whether you like working in groups or working solo, we can all use these systems to do our very best TOGETHER!

HOW YOU CAN HELP: Take action! We truly do appreciate ALL efforts! Share your cleanups both in the 808 Cleanups App and our social media so that we can all work smarter, not harder. Need additional help? Reach out to us anytime, that’s what we’re here for!