2024 Earth Day Service
Sunday, April 21, 2024 will mark Hawaii Betsuin’s 8th annual Earth Day Service! This year, the guest speaker for the 9:30 a.m. service will be Steve Lohse, chair of the statewide Green Hongwanji Committee and Hawaii Betsuin’s Board Secretary. Steve has put a lot of thought into a plan to actualize the statewide Green Hongwanji Initiative and his talk will be a chance to learn more about his insights along the way.
The service will be in person and on Zoom. If you plan to attend virtually, here’s a link to the Zoom details.
About Our Speaker
Steve immigrated to Honolulu from Texas in 2000 and lived in Chinatown for 23 years. He spends his time where his degrees in political science, biology, and business overlap, and he has worked as an environmental scientist for most of his time in Hawaii. His favorite bumper sticker is ‘Respect Cause & Effect.’ Steve is secretary of the Hawaii Betsuin Board and chair of the Social Concerns Committee. He is also chair of the Honolulu District’s Committee on Social Concerns and the Kyodan’s Green Hongwanji Committee. See Steve after the service for the link (http://honpahi.link/greenplan) to the ‘Green Hongwanji Plan,’ adopted by the Kyodan Board in August 2023.
Refreshments Theme
After last year’s Earth Day Service, the refreshments theme was Canoe Plants, those brought in ancient times by Polynesian voyagers. This year’s refreshments will have a green theme too: Eat Local. Green Team members and the sangha at large are invited to join with the board team assigned to April 21 refreshments by bringing food items featuring ingredients grown locally. That could be your own garden, Oahu, or Hawaii — and, of course, could include canoe plants! Do refreshment items need to be 100% local ingredients? No, that’s not how our denomination rolls 😊.
We envision each refreshment item on April 21 having a simple tent card identifying the item, the local ingredients used and their origin, and the preparer/contributor.
https://forms.gle/GEiwg2tgrnxsShBx8
…and you are welcome to email greenteaminfo@hawaiibetsuin.org.
For inspiration, you could:
- Take a look at an article about last year’s Canoe Plants refreshments.
- Visit the Hawaii Agriculture & Food Products Search page to look up locally grown/made items and where to find them.
- Visit a local farmer’s market — you can find a map of locations maintained by The Seasoned Wok.
Most may immediately think of locally grown fruits and veggies as ingredients, but “Eat Local” ingredients can include local eggs (e.g. Ka Lei Eggs), dairy (e.g. Naked Cow Dairy), and meat (e.g. Kualoa Grown beef and pork) too!
Here’s what people have signed up to bring so far (at least using the online form):
International Earth Day Theme
Example of a complete BYO-CUPS kit.
The worldwide 2024 Earth Day theme is “Planet vs. Plastics.” While Hawaii Betsuin has made progress in phasing out single-use plastics at temple functions, let’s use Earth Day 2024 to renew the move toward reusable foodware. Remember our pre-COVID push for BYO-CUPS (Bring Your Own Cup, Utensils, Plate)? We encourage all sangha members to get their kits ready as one step to a greener Hongwanji.
A variation of this article was submitted for the April 2024 Goji newsletter by David Atcheson.