“‘K, make sure you got no gold chains, lanyards, jewelry. Don't want 'em to get stuck in the shredder," says Michelle Pieper to three half-awake boys outside Nanakuli Intermediate and High School's admin office. Pieper demonstrates how to feed cardboard through a shredder—the material emerges corrugated. White socks peeping through crocs and black headphones resting above their ears, the teens get the hang of it quickly. Not bad, considering it's 8:30 a.m. on a Saturday.
A Hawaiian-language teacher at Nanakuli, Pieper began researching composting during the COVID shutdown, "You know, when everyone got into farming." She shared her findings in class because "you cannot study the Hawaiian language without studying the aina [land]," she says. Now she and her students hold Sustainable Saturdays once a month. "We call ourselves Scrappahz Union 96792," she says, the zip code referring to Oahu's west side. People drop off cardboard in exchange for CSA boxes from farmers, who in turn take home the shredded sheets for mulch and chicken bed linings.
Around 9 a.m., Lily Cabinatan arrives with mangoes and lemons from her farm, Top Notch Fruit, in Maili. Kids load shredded newspaper and cardboard stacks onto her truck. "First year I began putting the cardboard under the trees, I get plenny mangoes," she says. "This helps trap moisture around the roots. And when mangoes drop, they don't get bruised."
Scrappahz Union 96792 member Keara Kilakaula-Aguiar shapes custom plant pots from recycled cardboard during a Sustainable Saturday event at Mana Mahiai Farm in Leeward Oahu.
While some, like the three boys, are just here to knock out community service hours for college prep electives, others like Jeremiah Magallones found ohana in Scrappahz. "I was a kolohe kid," a troublemaker, he says. "Grew up around addiction. That's the reality of Nanakuli. I'd rather be doing this." Now, Magallones attends leadership camps and speaks at town hall meetings. "He's become a leader," says a proud Pieper.
Nanakuli School has a reputation: Its students are ready "fo' scrap," or to fight. But Pieper sees past the stereotype. "These kids, I'm building relationships with them. Once they get to know you, they let their walls down. I have one boy with no electricity at home, so he would rather be with me. Another girl, both parents are out on the streets. I was born out and raised out here, so I know," says Pieper, tearing up. "The name Scrappahz Union is our way of flipping the script in a positive way. Yes, we like scrap. We like your cardboard scraps, food scraps, newspaper scraps!"
Scrappahz Union has won awards three years in a row—including $25,000 from American Savings Bank's KeikiCo contest. They've used the money to buy shredders for schools on Oahu's west side, Hawaii Island and Maui. Pieper's dream is to hopefully see more schools create their own zero-waste programs. "Even Waianae School," she jokes. "There's that rivalry but we're still 96792."
