Dale Geldum of Kaimuki and David Watt of Waikiki make it a habit to go to the beach every evening, either to sit and watch the sunset or to enjoy being in the ocean. Their enjoyment has been marred, however, by the specter of beach trash — in particular, dozens of woven beach mats and plastic air mattresses left behind by others.

Not content to just let the litter lie, they looked for a way to make the material useful again.

After considerable thought and experimentation, they came up with the idea of making bags, of the beach variety.

They created an eco-chic design, using the grass beach mats for the body of the bag and air mattresses for trims. The handles are webbing fabricated from recycled plastics. The bags' lining is also a clever use of recycled materials.

Geldum and Watt strip used cheapie-style body boards — the ones made of styrofoam with a plastic cover — and use the aloha print plastics to make attractive, one-of-a-kind linings.

To add to the green aspects of Kini Beach, scraps from the beach mats are used in a compost pile; the hang tags are leftover pieces of the air mattresses.

Division of labor for the project has been unusual. Watt, a contractor by profession who had never sewn a stitch in his life, now does all the sewing for Kini Beach. Geldum, who majored in merchandising at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, does the marketing.

Jim Heather of Outrigger Hotels & Resorts thought Kini Beach was a great idea and got on board immediately, asking his housekeeping staff to collect beach mats, air mattresses, body boards and inner tubes that are left behind in guests' rooms. Now Geldum and Watt are going to other hotels to ask them to do the same. There is so much stuff to collect that they find themselves doing a pickup at the Outrigger four to six times a week.

That's a lot of detritus being kept out of O'ahu's landfill and from the ocean itself.