Uncovering the secrets behind Kauai's Glass Beach

By Barb Jensen

"Look at this!" my husband, Jim, said, as he handed me the American Airlines magazine on our flight to Kauai, Hawaii, on March 6. An entire page revealed the beauty of Kauai's Glass Beach.
"Oh my gosh! That's gorgeous!" I said. "We have to find that beach."
The deep blue sky, the fluffy white clouds, and the blue ocean with its white waves washing in to shore made a lovely backdrop, but it was the stones, the stones of every imaginable color on that beach that made it so impressive.
Jim and I had been to Hawaii before, but we had never seen a beach like that. I knew that there were black beaches in Hawaii, but on this beach, there were black, blue, green, yellow, orange, red, white and opaque stones or pebbles that added an elegance we had never seen.
"I wonder why it's called the Glass Beach," Jim said.
"I don't know," I said, "but remind me to charge my camera battery before we go."
Finding Glass Beach seemed as easy as adjusting to the 80-degree temperatures on Kauai. When the blacktop road ended, we parked our car and walked down a sandy road to the beach. Other cars followed us. Obviously, they had been here before and knew there was room to turn around.
When we reached the beach, it was nothing like the photo we had seen in the magazine. Oh yes, there were colored stones here and there, but in the photo, you didn't have to search for the colored stones. They were everywhere.
At other beaches, we probably would have taken our sandals off and walked into the ocean, but we were both so disappointed that we just stood there. A young couple walked hand-in-hand down the beach to our right. A young woman with several small children also found a spot in the ocean to our right where the little ones played in a shallow area. An older woman with her had the same beautiful olive skin that the young mother and small children did, so we immediately assumed that they were natives. Instead of keeping her distance, as many of the natives do, the older woman approached us.
"Is this Glass Beach?" Jim asked.
"Yes," the woman said.
"But it doesn't look like the pictures we've seen," I said.
"I know," the woman said. "People with trucks came here and filled them with stones. The said they were going to make authentic Hawaiian jewelry. It's so sad." The woman then went on to tell us that years ago, before there were landfills, people would take their glass jars and bottles to the top of the bluff on our left and then throw them in the ocean. The glass would break into sharp pieces, but in time, the ocean water and waves smoothed the edges. "They were beautiful stones."
Jim and I each reached down to pick up a handful, separating the lovely colored stones from the sand. Amazingly, the stones had no sharp edges. The urge to take those pretty pebbles home was tempting, but then, we would be no different than those who took them by the truckload. Instead, we put the stones back so that others who come here might also enjoy their beauty.
Two days earlier, Jim and I had taken a catamaran ride along the Napali Coast of Kauai. On the way, our captain pointed out a large landfill on the western side of the island. "They just keep piling the stuff up," he added.
Before we left Hawaii, Jim and I separated the trash in our condo. We put the plastic bottles on one side of the sink; the glass ones on the other. We also separated the cardboard from the cans.
Since there were no instructions to do this, we assumed that all of these recyclables would go together to that "great white mountain of trash."
Nature might transform all of that garbage into something beautiful, like it did years ago on Kauai's Glass Beach.