No matter where you go everyone is talking about the benefits of going green by recycling. Everything from food, fabric, beauty products and jewelry are all reaping the rewards of the recycle revolution. Recycling “is the reprocessing of old materials into new products, with the aims of preventing the waste of potentially useful materials.” (Wikipedia) For Sarah Herrington, of Oahu’s North Shore, those useful materials would be bottle-caps. Walking into her cozy beachside home was like stepping into Mark’s Garage on a First Friday. “My boyfriend Nick is also an artist” she whispered, “He’s sleeping over there on the couch.” As we made our way towards the kitchen, we passed several canvases that were vibrantly covered with work resembling the likes of Pablo Picasso. In the kitchen, a food dehydrator was finishing up a fresh batch of macadamia nut cookies. “We cracked a bunch of Mac-nuts from the tree outside yesterday and just blended them up and made some cookies.” Apparently when you become a raw-vegan, your food dehydrator transforms into your oven. For many of us out there, practicing this type of self-sustaining, live-clean lifestyle might seem extreme and even a little scary. What? No Poke? But for Sarah this recent mind shift is her motivation behind her Aloha Bottle Caps business. When she’s not perfecting her caps, Sarah works as a cook in Paradise Found, a vegetarian restaurant on the North Shore. This was the job that turned her life around. “The café has inspired me to live the life that I lead.” She describes the restaurant as being the catalyst in her newly green lifestyle that now includes, veganism, yoga and recycling bottle caps. Sarah explains, “The original idea comes from Mexican Folk art, they do all sorts of stuff with recycled things, I think unintentionally mostly because that’s what they have to use.” Sarah pays homage to Mexico by integrating designs that include themes like Dia De Los Muertos (Day of the Dead), the Virgin Mary and Frida Kahlo. However her ideas don’t stop there. If you are an Andy Warhol fan, the hot pink Marilyn Monroe earring might be just what you’re looking for.
Yogini’s can choose between a golden Ohm symbol and a lotus flower that seem to float over a purple background. Feeling a little hippie chick? Peace, love, and yin/yangs abound. Finally, for the hardcore Hawaiian vintage buffs Sarah makes sure to always have a large supply of hula girl designs. This tedious process all begins with finding the right cap and then matching it up with the right picture. All of the hula girls will be on local beers like Mehana or Kona Brewery. Dia De Los Muertos and Frida Kahlo are matched with Mexican Beers like Pacifico or Corona. For those buyers who don’t want to sport an alcohol logo, Sarah will use, the cap from her favorite beer, Negra Modelo. “They’re clear on the back so, some people request that they would rather have that.” Sarah’s newest client, Honolulu native, Momi Chee, designer and owner of Lily Lotus, requests that all of her orders be bear of any beer. The next step in the assembly line is smashing the cap. This is done with Sarah’s secret tool. This ambiguous apparatus is what sets Aloha Bottle Caps apart from the competition by making the cap smoother and flatter than others. Once that is done, Sarah and Nick will hand cut the thousands of circular designs that are then glued onto the cap and finally covered with resin. Once dry, the earrings will receive their “graduation” hooks and make their way to various retailers on Oahu and Maui. For those of you who don’t wear earrings, Sarah also makes pendants, key chains and magnets. Recycled jewelry started making its mark on America’s fashion world in the 80’s. Designs ranged from dresses to caps and even handbags. Remi Rubel is probably the most famous designer coining the nickname “Bottle Cap Queen”. While spending her Artist-in-Residence at San Francisco’s SF Recycling & Disposal INC, she wanted to teach inner city youth that recycling is an art form. To accomplish this she and 45 Youth in Action corps members, ranging in age from 12-14, created the largest piece of art she’s ever done and they designed a 400 lb. blanket that contained 8,500 bottle caps. Although Sarah’s designs may not be as large as Remi’s blanket, her ideals are. She shared some of her life goals with me. “At some point, I’d like to be able to inspire women and young girls to do something like this, just to have a little something that can help empower them and give them confidence to live life.” Some of her most memorable moments came in the form of rejection but just as quickly as someone said “no”, there was someone waiting there to say “yes”.
By: Lehua Kai
