Genki Ball Effort Initiated by Ken Kaneshiro and Others Reaches Milestone

On Earth Day, an effort to clean up the Ala Wai Canal celebrated two meaningful milestones. The Genki Ala Wai Project reached 300,000 Genki Balls, and the City and County of Honolulu proclaimed April 2026 as “Genki Ball Month.” This bioremediation initiative involves Genki Balls—mud balls containing billions of Effective Microorganisms® (EM)—that are tossed into the state’s most polluted waterway where they sink to the bottom of the canal to help break down the sludge.

EM Technology has been successful in over a hundred countries worldwide over the past 30 years, inspiring Kenneth Kaneshiro, director of the Center for Conservation Research and Training at the Pacific Biosciences Research Center in SOEST, and others to initiate this effort in 2019. Kaneshiro and his team determined that deploying Genki Balls was an approach that could engage community members and begin to enhance the water quality in the Ala Wai Canal.

(Excerpted from SOEST News – See the Full Article)