Fixtures used at convention reused by school in Manoa

Sister Joan of Arc Souza, head of Saint Francis School in Manoa, is thrilled with the newest addition to her classrooms.

They’re lightweight, portable and recyclable.

The cardboard furnishings left over from the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s World Conservation Congress, which concluded on Sept. 10, are now at the Manoa campus.

Cardboard furnishings? That’s right. As part of its initiative to reduce waste at the event in Honolulu, the IUCN constructed its pavilions at the Hawai‘i Convention Center exhibition hall out of corrugated cardboard furnishings by Kartonart of Hungary and CartonLab of Spain — the partitions, the benches, the chairs and stools attendees sat on, along with the tabletops and lecterns they used.

“There’s so much waste in building pavilions for the average conference,” said Jennifer Milholen, a member of the IUCN’s green team, made up of volunteers who tried to make the event generate as little waste as possible. “The No. 1 goal was to get it reused.”

It was a first for the IUCN, according to Milholen. Several community organizations, including Saint Francis School, took the cardboard furnishings.

Saint Francis inherited about 30 folding stools, a few chairs and two lecterns emblazoned with the event’s hibiscus logo, according to Souza.

She said Saint Francis, which has about 500 students, from preschool to 12th grade, has cared about sustainability and stewarding the environment ever since she has been its leader.

“We need to take care of the aina,” Souza said. “We’ve been doing it for a long time. This just supports what we’re already doing.”

The cardboard furnishings will be used for school assemblies and other events, as well as in classrooms where students receive tutoring. When they are no longer usable, the school plans to recycle them.

Other Saint Francis initiatives include recycling bottles and cans, recycling paper, which is sometimes reused as scratch paper, and drawing power from more than 200 solar panels atop the roof of campus buildings. The school has cut its electricity costs by about 15 percent, Souza said.

Saint Francis School parent Letizia de Lannoy happened to be at the environmental convention on the last day, when the pavilions were being taken down. While visiting the pavilions, which were free and open to the public, she heard that IUCN organizers were offering the cardboard furnishings to local community groups. She drove to the center, folded them up and tucked them into her car.

“I really felt a connection with the Congress,” she said. “It was great, all the interactions.”

Milholen said that while composting efforts came with some glitches, the water refill stations were able to prevent about 8,800 bottles of plastic water from being consumed, and paper waste was also drastically reduced at the event this year.

Other places you might find the IUCN cardboard furnishings around the island include Kakaako-based nonprofit Kupu Hawaii, Kamehameha Schools, ‘Iolani School, Kahuku Public and School Library, and the William S. Richardson School of Law Library.

Nina Wu writes about environmental issues. Reach her at 529-4892 or nwu@staradvertiser.com.