Parley’s new AIR Station opens in Honolulu – creating a communal hub focused on education, ocean immersion, art installations, plastic upcycling and collaboration

As part of this year’s Earth Week celebrations, our team in Hawaiʻi recently unveiled the latest and largest Parley AIR Station to date. Expanding our global programs, the new AIR Station in Honolulu on the island of Oʻahu is a community hub for collaboration, education and eco-innovation, built to champion our movement and inspire local changemakers to join us in tackling plastic pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss and other major threats to the oceans.

Designed to minimize waste and ecological impact, the new Parley AIR Station incorporates a 40-foot shipping container split into two sections, and a second 20-foot container bridged by a spacious deck. The first section of the larger container houses our collaboration and communication center, where the Parley Hawai‘i team and collaborating organizations host meetings and discussions on ways we can end the destruction of our oceans.

On site, our Parley educators host regular upcycling workshops and inspiring and empowering talks about the oceans, plastic pollution and our Parley AIR Strategy – Avoid. Intercept. Redesign. Interactive presentations are also held on a weekly basis by Sustainable Coastlines Hawai‘i, telling the story of plastic pollution on the Hawaiian islands; Zero Waste O‘ahu, empowering visitors to move towards a zero waste lifestyle; Changing Tides Foundation, focusing on composting and hands-on Bokashi workshops; Bishop Museum, exploring the importance of coral reefs to Hawaiʻi's marine ecosystems and their significance in Hawaiian culture.

With a focus on providing free access to ocean education, select groups of local youth are invited to dive deeper into the Parley AIR Station experience, strengthening their personal connection to marine ecosystems through our ocean immersion clinics held in collaboration with Nā Kama Kai.

Book a session at the Parley AIR Station in Hawaiʻi

The second portion of the 40-foot container is home to our custom-built plastic upcycling facility, providing workshop opportunities for visitors to transform plastic debris intercepted through local coastal cleanups into new products. Created with our long term collaborators Precious Plastic, this is a unique chance for individuals to take direct, hands-on action – turning materials that were once a threat to Hawai‘i’s marine ecosystems into symbols of change. Though recycling and repurposing plastic will not solve the problem, the facility creates useful items like carabiners and modular blocks that visitors can take home, and helps educate participants about the mass quantities of plastic waste threatening ecosystems and communities in the Hawaiian archipelago and worldwide.

A third component of the Parley AIR Station is a 20-foot rotating exhibition space for housing artworks, video installations and multimedia works. The debut program is an audio visual installation by Coral Morphologic – a transformative journey into the surreal underwater world, illuminating the beauty of zooxanthellae, coral, and other aquatic animals through imagery, curated sounds, music and lighting.

Located centrally between the containers, an educational open-air classroom and lounge section provides a space where visitors can come together to relax, interact, collaborate, and absorb and share learnings from their time in the Parley AIR Station. Sessions can also be filmed and broadcast online to classrooms and other groups around the world.

“Turning waste into a resource is fundamental to our survival. We live in a finite space and callous attitudes towards waste are now front and center in the form of pollution. By upcycling the detritus from societies overconsumption of plastics, we show that much of what we are throwing away is actually still valuable but also for that which we can’t upcycle, pollution is the result of failed design.”

– Kahi Pacarro, Director Parley Hawaiʻi

The Hawaiian islands have a rich history and heritage of caring for the land and the oceans, and living in symbiosis with the ecosystem. Island communities are the first to witness the impacts of today’s fast-growing marine threats, and are also the first to act. Locating our second Parley AIR Station on the grounds of the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, the largest museum in Hawai‘i and the premier natural and cultural history institution in the Pacific, is the perfect setting to launch a new chapter in our global community engagement programs. With the support and collaboration of our NGO partners, local Hawaiians and visitors, the Parley AIR Station is intended to provide personal takeaways for every individual who steps through its doors, through the power of collaboration.

As a community space, people of all backgrounds are welcome at the Parley AIR Station to learn, explore, be heard and discuss ways we can create real change for the environment together. Local speakers, experts and leaders from the Hawaiian community are invited on a weekly basis to discuss the importance of the oceans and the main threats the oceans, and all of us, now face. Sessions are dedicated to deepening a physical, scientific and cultural understanding of the marine environment with a focus that promotes youth engagement, stewardship and the use of best practices in daily life.

The Parley AIR Station is due to stay open for a minimum of 18 months at the Bishop Museum. Daily sessions open to the general public are offered from Wednesday through Sunday and reservations are required in advance. All sessions are free and can be booked online here. Ocean Clinics and Sunset Session experiences will also be offered on a monthly basis – you can subscribe for updates here.