From reusable beeswax wraps to compostable coffee, these Hawaiʻi brands are changing what a sustainable pantry looks like.
Sustainability in the kitchen doesn't have to mean ordering specialty products from the mainland and waiting a week for shipping. Some of the most thoughtfully made food and home goods in the country are already here — grown, roasted, steeped, and packaged in Hawaiʻi by people who live here and have a direct stake in keeping these islands healthy.
House of Mana Up, in partnership with Ulupono Initiative, connects residents and visitors with Hawaiʻi-made products that reflect a more intentional approach to what we buy, consume, and bring into our homes. Here's how to start building a pantry that lowers waste, longer lasting, and rooted locally.
Swap Plastic Wrap for Something Better: Meli Wraps
The single easiest swap in any kitchen is getting rid of plastic wrap. Meli Wraps, founded on Kauaʻi by Melia Foster and a graduate of Mana Up's Cohort 5, makes reusable beeswax wraps from GOTS-certified organic cotton, 100% Hawaiian beeswax, tree resin, and plant oils. Each wrap lasts up to 150 washes — about one to two years of daily use — and cleans up with cold water and soap.
The math on plastic is not subtle: Meli Wraps estimates its products have kept over a million pounds of plastic out of the ocean. Every roll of plastic wrap you don't buy is one fewer roll heading to a landfill. The wraps come in a range of island-inspired prints and sizes, and they're made entirely at Meli Wraps' Kauaʻi facility by a locally employed team using ingredients sourced from Hawaiʻi beekeepers and farms.
Sustainability in the kitchen doesn't have to mean ordering specialty products from the mainland and waiting a week for shipping. Some of the most thoughtfully made food and home goods in the country are already here.
Courtesy of Big Island Coffee Roasters
Rethink Your Morning Brew: Big Island Coffee Roasters
Most people don't think of coffee as a sustainability decision, but the single-serve packaging piling up in landfills is a real problem. Big Island Coffee Roasters — a farm, mill, and roastery on Hawaiʻi Island and one of Mana Up's earliest alumni, graduating with Cohort 2 in 2018 — offers single-serve coffee in fully compostable brew bags. Tea-bag style, steep in hot water like a French press, straight into the compost bin when you're done.
Beyond the packaging, the sourcing model matters: Big Island Coffee Roasters pays Hawaiʻi family farms directly, and the company runs on 100% renewable electrical energy, preventing more than 29 tons of CO2 emissions to date. If coffee is part of your daily routine, this is one of the most straightforward ways to make it a better one.
Upgrade Your Tea Shelf: Hobbs Tea
Hobbs Tea, founded by Kauaʻi-raised Jamie Lyons and a graduate of Mana Up's Cohort 8, grows its tea on Hawaiʻi Island in the shade of old-growth ʻōhiʻa lehua trees. Every sachet and box is 100% plant-based, fully compostable, and free of plastics and toxins — no synthetic dyes, no microplastic-shedding tea bags, no aluminum foil lining. Lyons also partners with Trees For The Future, planting trees to offset the paper used in production.
For a pantry staple that gets used every single day, that kind of closed loop adds up fast.
Stock Your Pantry with Hawaiian Honey: Wai Meli
Most store-bought honey isn't what it appears to be. More than half of the honey imported and bottled in the United States has been blended, heated, or adulterated to the point that it barely resembles the original product. Wai Meli, founded by Kawika Sebag at Big Island Moonbow Farms, is the opposite of that.
Sebag raises bees using organic methods on Hawaiʻi Island and harvests in small batches, moving hives to wherever specific flowers are in bloom to produce single-varietal honeys — Lehua Blossom, Eucalyptus, Kiawe Coconut — each one tasting distinctly of its source. The honey is unheated to preserve its nutritional character, and every jar reflects a specific season and place on the island. Beyond the product itself, Sebag's work supports honeybee health at a time when pollinator populations are under serious pressure — a quiet but consequential form of agricultural sustainability.
The Wrap on Gift Wrap: Wrappily
This one isn't a pantry staple, but it belongs in any conversation about low-waste living. Wrappily, founded in 2013 by Sara Smith on Maui and a Cohort 4 graduate, makes gift wrap printed on newsprint with soy-based inks — paper that can be recycled up to seven times, composted, or fed to backyard chickens. Standard glossy wrapping paper can't be recycled at all, thanks to its dyes and laminate coating.
Smith's newer sugarcane paper line takes it further: made from bagasse, the agricultural byproduct left over after sugarcane is processed, it's compostable and produced from a crop that regenerates in 12–14 months, compared to the 15–30 years it takes to grow a tree used for conventional paper. Wrappily now sells at Target nationally, but it started in Maui and still calls Hawaiʻi home.
What's Next: Cohort 11 Brings More to the Pantry
Mana Up's newest class — Cohort 11, announced in 2026 — includes several companies that fit squarely into a sustainable, locally sourced pantry. They're newer to the House of Mana Up shelves, but worth knowing now.
Waimea Herb Company grows and dries herbs on the slopes of Kohala on Hawaiʻi Island. Buying locally dried herbs means fresher product, significantly less freight, and none of the excess packaging that comes with most mainland spice brands. The company's origin story is also worth noting: it started not as a business pitch but as an afterschool program rooted in Hawaiian healing traditions.
Wailua Granola Co., founded by Taleea Carvalho on Kauaʻi, makes small-batch granola from local ingredients. It's the kind of breakfast staple that earns a permanent spot in the pantry — and one that's easy to feel good about restocking.
Ahualoa Family Farms on Hawaiʻi Island grows, processes, and packages macadamia-based products entirely on-island, supporting 75 local farmers in the process. That degree of local vertical integration means fewer miles traveled, fewer hands in the chain, and a product that stays in Hawaiʻi's economy at every stage.
The Ulupono Connection
Ulupono Initiative has long invested in the systems and producers that make it possible for Hawaiʻi to feed and sustain itself more fully. Hawaiʻi currently imports roughly 85–90% of its food — a dependency that's both economically fragile and environmentally costly.
House of Mana Up's partnership with Ulupono reflects a shared belief that consumer choices and local investment work together. When you buy from Hawaiʻi-based brands, your purchase contributes to a longer chain of impact — one that supports local farmers, reduces import reliance, and builds the kind of economic and environmental resilience these islands need.
Where to Shop
House of Mana Up is the retail arm of Mana Up, a Hawaiʻi-based consumer product accelerator. Its partnership with Ulupono Initiative supports the growth of locally made products that strengthen Hawaiʻi's food and consumer economy.
Find a rotating selection of Hawaiʻi-made food, pantry, and home goods at its retail locations and online.
