AHUKINI — Kenneth Yoshikawa of The Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center on Oahu was busy Friday morning at the county’s thrift store reuse program at the Kauai Resource Center on Ahukini Road near Lihue Airport.
Yoshikawa got help from a county crew in packing collected items into a large shipping container for transport to the ARC on Oahu.
“These items came from the different thrift stores on the island,” Yoshikawa said.
“We went through The Salvation Army’s Lihue Corps store, the Hanapepe Corps store, and continued on to the ReStore at the Kauai Habitat for Humanity. We had some people from the United Church of Christ dropping off, and we visited the Kauai Humane Society’s Bloomin’ Tails. All told, we ended up with about two big truckloads of bulky or regular household items.”
The collected items, representing overstock from the thrift stores, will be shipped to Oahu, offering another option of keeping things out of the landfill.
The county’s thrift stores reuse program is targeted at thrift stores that will be able to move reusable items that aren’t selling off their showroom floors, thus making room for new donations.
These items can be dropped off at the county’s reuse area at the Kauai Resource Center weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. The area is closed on county holidays.
Shipped items to the ARC will be sorted and refurbished for sale at multiple stores around Oahu. Whatever is not sold locally will be shipped abroad to countries for use directly, repurposing them, or recycled into new products.
The thrift store reuse program is open on a case-by-case basis. The county asks that interested parties reach out to a local thrift store to see if they have the capacity to take donations before bringing them to the resource center.
The collected items will not be resold at the KRC, but instead stored and shipped to the ARC.
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Dennis Fujimoto, staff writer and photographer, can be reached at 245-0453 or dfujimoto@thegardenisland.com.
