After a brief year off, the Kokua Hawai'i Foundation's highly anticipated Kokua Festival returned to the Waikiki Shell, a culmination of the foundation's and the community's Earth Week celebration. Residents and visitors flooded the gates all afternoon on both days of the Friday, Saturday event and were entertained with music, information and a ton of freebies from the vendors.

Jack played some old favorites and jammed some new tunes from his latest album, To The Sea, which was recorded using 100 percent solar energy in Hawai'i. That's local. Photo: Kevin Whitton

With a selection of local beers on tap and friendly faces putting yogurt, cereal, fruit bars and other tasty snacks in hand, Kokua Village, the half-moon of vendors and sponsors tucked away behind the auditorium, was a packed social arena of academic discourse, green products and initiatives and nonchalant kibitzing. Fresh, prepared food was also on tap and the lines for a salad or a slice of pizza were a testament to the savory dishes on offer.

The earth-friendly infrastructure of the event is a noteworthy model of sustainability on a large scale: water stations for filling reusable containers diverted over 8,000 plastic water bottles from the waste stream; around 300 cars were taken off the road by fans who road their bikes or used alternative transportation; the generators and production vehicles used at the festival were powered by locally produced biodiesel fuel; zero-waste trash receptacles were employed to separate recyclables from compostables; and to top it off, the CO2 emissions from the production were measured and offset with the purchase of carbon credits.

But everyone knows the real reason people flock to concerts is for the music. This year's lineup featured Anuhea, ukulele virtuoso Jake Shimabukuro, Taj Mahal and the Hula Blues Band, the acoustic styling of Ziggy Marley, and of course, the mellowest of all groovy rockers, Jack Johnson. With a strum of Johnson's guitar, the crowd threw themselves at his feet, screaming and dancing to his simple rhythmic melodies, enraptured by his soothing and buttery, trance-inducing voice.

Kokua Fest served to educate and replenish spirits and souls through music and build community around the ever-so important topic of sustainability. Maybe next year, if they would just let people reuse their beer cups, they could really divert some trash from the waste stream.