Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger

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Not bitter about litter, he's boxing it for sale

Maui entrepreneur Jon Farmer thinks outside the box, even when he's thinking inside the box. When I met with him recently, he was thinking about all the things he's been putting inside boxes: discarded sales receipts, wayward napkins, lost combs, broken sunglasses, unopened packets of sunscreen, a Japan Airlines boarding pass and a beached business card for "Gabby" Makalena, "Licensed Surfing Instructor."

In a word, it's rubbish. But inspired rubbish.

"It's 100 percent fresh garbage made in Hawaii," says the irrepressible -- not to mention, aptly named -- Farmer. "Handpicked just for you."

The box in question is a 3- or 4-inch clear plastic cube filled with rubbish Farmer farmed off of Waikiki Beach just for me. It's signed, numbered and labeled "Tropical Trash." It is the latest brainchild -- or perhaps brain orphan -- of one of Hawaii's strangest brains: the brain that sold 90,000 bottles of "Pure Hawaiian Air" and has babes in bikinis selling $20 "haute dogs" from wagons in Wailuku.

Tropical Trash is Farmer's attempt to entice people to keep Hawaii clean by selling them (for $25 a pop) a sealed plastic box of rubbish that he hand-harvests from various Hawaii locations. ("I touch it so you don't have to," he says.)

He insists, with his tongue barely in his cheek, that his Tropical Trash is not an attempt to re-create the infamous, yet frivolous, Pet Rock craze but instead rather to blend art with opala for the public good. And, yes, maybe make a few bucks on the side.

"I call it garbage sculpture, the art of trash," he says. But it's also a clever way to get tourists "to take our trash home with you."

My personal piece of art contains all the aforementioned items of refuse as well as some mysterious material that I can't quite identify. And I'm not about to go spelunking into the "objet d'art" even though he assures it is all "clean trash." The box itself, he helpfully points out is "leakproof, nontoxic and odor-free." It identifies the junk as having come from Waikiki on Dec. 4, 2006, making it something of a time capsule of trash.

He stresses that he doesn't put in any really yucky or potentially dangerous items such as used condoms and decomposing food products, even though he sees his share of these kinds of things while collecting his treasures. The stuff in each box comes from specific locations: golf courses, surfing events, University of Hawaii football games, airports ... anywhere people might not see their way clear to dropping their rubbish in official rubbish cans. The 59-year-old retiree concedes that gathering material does draw wary looks from strangers.

"People wonder ... he doesn't look like a homeless person, but he's picking up trash," he says. "It doesn't matter if they think I'm homeless, I'm looking for the good stuff."

He's on Oahu to run/walk in today's Honolulu Marathon and pick up rubbish while he's at it.

"I'll be the only one running picking up trash as I go," he beams.

Farmer's extreme experiments in unconventional marketing go back to when he lived in Portland, Ore., working as a flight attendant and in-flight supervisor for Continental Airlines. He sold bottles of Tonya Hot Sauce, capitalizing on notorious white-trash figure skater Tonya Harding's kneecapping of a rival (the label proclaimed "A Sauce Not for the Weak-Kneed!"). When members of the Portland Trailblazers basketball team began to have problems of a criminal nature, he put out "Jail Blazer Jam."

Always funny, always controversial, his products inevitably caught the attention of the news media. And lawyers. Tonya sued him, he says, basically to try to get a cut of his hot-sauce action. Rather than let her capitalize on his twisted imagination, he hauled his remaining inventory to a farmer's market in Beaverton, Ore., and sold out 140 cases by lunchtime.

Farmer and his wife, a sales rep for a line of high-end shoes, moved to Hawaii three years ago and he immediately began exploring the weird side of business in the islands. He came up with the idea of selling pure Hawaii air in bottles and sold nearly 100,000 of them for $6 a piece. The "pure" air actually was scented with "fragrance beads" that allowed visitors to get a whiff of the islands after they were back on the mainland.

He then started his inspired Weenies and Bikinis hot dog carts, manned by girls in bikinis. You might accuse Farmer of having questionable taste, but you can't question his business acumen. Who knew that you could actually sell a hot dog for $20 in Hawaii? Or a plastic cube filled with trash for $25? The islands are just a little more fun with Farmer around. He's a breath of fresh air. Bottled, of course.