Goodwill is just fine
Goodwill is just fine
In the Tribune-Herald’s May 31 “Your Views” section, there was a mention that Goodwill Industries of Hawaii is “gone” from the Big Island. We would like to clarify that Goodwill’s commitment to the community is still strong and only growing!
Goodwill is still dedicated to providing employment training and services throughout the Big Island with our human services programs, which are partly funded by the reselling of donations from generous donors.
The donations of gently used clothing and household items can still be dropped off in Hilo and Kona at our stores and donation centers. Those donations help keep over 12 million pounds out of Hawaii’s landfills.
The most updated Goodwill information and locations can be found at www.higoodwill.org.
We would like to thank the Big Island community for their support of our nonprofit mission to help people with employment barriers to reach their full potential and become self-sufficient, we and look forward to many more years of serving the community.
Ken Leung
Director of retail,
Goodwill Industries of Hawaii
GMO quandry
Regarding “GMO Hawaii,” Tribune-Herald, June 9: When new genes naturally appear in plants and animals, whether by mutation or transposition between species, they spread through the population if they are advantageous. This is organic evolution by natural selection, and the appearance of new genes in a species is usually a slow process.
GMO is evolution in hyperdrive caused by the agency of human intervention, but the principles of natural selection still apply. When I look at a field of Roundup Ready corn growing on bare soil, I see profound genetic weakness. All the plants are a clone with identical genomes, and thus have no genetic variation. Any new plant disease affecting one individual will wipe out the entire crop.
In ordinary plant populations, emergent plant diseases left individuals who happened to be resistant alive and available to carry on. The bare, Roundup-soaked soil is also a powerful selective environment for new Roundup-resistant weeds.
With the application of industrial-scale herbicide agriculture, such weeds are inevitable as a result of natural selection or activist interventionists who learn the techniques of their enemy in order to defeat him at his own game.
William Mautz
Hilo