Our Story - A Hawai'i Native Plant Restoration Project

Did you know that Hawai’i is the endangered species capital of the world?

Mālama Honua in Hawaiian means to protect everything that makes up our world: land, oceans, living beings, our cultures, and our communities.

Strawai'i was started as a conservation effort with three important missions:

1. Create local jobs & start a new agricultural economy for Hawai'i - Keep jobs in America and to generate income for our islands and Hawaiian subsistence fishing villagers. We pay our straw-artists $15/hour, which is the same as Amazon & Wholefoods' pay rate. Each handcrafted straw takes ~10 minutes to be created and made perfectly smooth.

2. Preserve Hawai’i’s biodiversity - Restore Hawai’i’s native forests & preventing the extinction of endemic plants, birds, tree snails, & marine endangered species through:

- Eliminating invasive bamboo species and turning them into functional goods

- Funding Hawaiian birds and animals on the IUCN’s Red list of endangered species e.g. sea turtles, monk seals, native sea birds

- Reforest our damaged ecosystems, and replant native Hawaiian flora that have been overwhelmed by invasive species like bamboo, strawberry guava, ginger, etc.

3. Eliminate plastic waste - Reduce plastic straws that are filling up our oceans and landfills. We are also leveraging the plastic straw bans to educate the public about our ecosystems - and to care for Mother Earth.

Made-in-the-US products cannot compete with made-in-China goods on pricing, however we're proud that our straws are organic and 100% chemical-free, with no bleach, and no formaldehyde. We can't change the world, but we can change how we do business. Unlike profit-driven businesses, that care about NOW, we put our emphasis on preserving our ecosystems - the paradise that we're borrowing from our next generations.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-01810-6?fbclid=IwAR2YKHN0A2Ol3gnSa__2J0Rq1Zm3ncQIcrReuZyT0ZAJMwlx1zhl3hXRQCg

Mahalo for visiting Strawai'i!