Our Story

ZWHI is fiscally sponsored by Inquiring Systems Inc. and our mission is to connect diverse Hawaiʻi Island communities to support equitable systems redesign and policy change to achieve zero waste.

ZWHI began in 2019 as a community group, hosting monthly meetings and doing community outreach. We grew to address Hawaiʻi Island’s waste problem by working to reduce packaging waste through policy and systems change. ZWHI works closely with cultural advisement to engage the Kumu Honua Mauli Ola’s Honua ʻEkolu framework to impact change in the home, the larger community, and the global community. Our approach is to shift away from a single-use waste culture in order to model systems of waste reduction that are grounded in Hawaiian value systems of Kanaka,`Āina, Akua Connections  (humankind, land, and spirit) – recalling the ancient relationship between land and humanity as a zero waste system. 

ZWHI is partnered with the non-profit Perpetual and Hawaiʻi County Department of Environmental Management to design and implement a community-based reusable foodware system in Hilo. The project was awarded two grants summing to 2.1 million from the Environmental Protection Agency to support infrastructure and implementation of the system.

Affiliated with ZWHI is NO POHŌ, a pilot project that is assisting The Locavore Store in Hilo transition from single-use glass beverage bottles to reusable/refillable ones. It was launched August 2022 and is continuing in order to gather more data on improving return rates of the bottles.