Green Chopsticks

Articles

• China's Chopsticks Crusade, Washington Post
• Chopstick controversy, New Internationalist
• Disposable Chopsticks Be Banned, CIIC
• God's little chopsticks, Mother Jones
• Chopstick trade endangering Siberian tiger, Deutsche Presse-Agentur
• Back to the Reading Room

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BEIJING -- To millions of Chinese, they are the most ordinary of eating utensils, two humble splints of wood, eight to 10 inches long, designed to be snapped apart before use and discarded after a meal as casually as a half-eaten fortune cookie.

But to people like Kang Dahu, disposable chopsticks are a menace, a symbol of all that is wrong with the way China treats the environment. During dinner at one of his favorite restaurants recently, the truck driver surprised the waitress by pulling out a personal set of chopsticks that he washes after every meal and carries wherever he goes in a little cloth bag.

"The disposable ones are such a waste! We're destroying what little is left of our forests to make them," said Kang, 22, who does volunteer work with several environmental groups. "Just imagine, years from now, when my grandchildren ask me what happened to all of China's trees, I'll have to say, 'We made them into chopsticks.' Isn't that pitiful?"

Cheap, convenient and as ubiquitous as bowls of rice, disposable chopsticks have become the utensils that Chinese environmentalists love to hate. Middle school children have written letters to Premier Zhu Rongji asking him to ban them. College students have persuaded campus cafeterias to replace them with spoons. Informal groups of Internet users have organized to distribute chopstick pouches so people can carry and reuse them, and some of China's pop singers have enlisted in the cause.

The campaign underscores the vitality of China's fledgling environmental movement, a ragtag collection of groups and individuals who operate in a gray area outside state control but never entirely free from it. It suggests that even as the ruling Communist Party tries to stifle unsanctioned organized activity, limited grass-roots activism in China has a place -- and that it can sometimes influence the government.

More than 100 state-owned restaurants in Beijing vowed this month to "go green" and start washing and reusing chopsticks. Shanghai and other cities are considering a partial ban on "one-time" chopsticks, as the disposable utensils are called. And the Finance Ministry is reportedly preparing a new tax on throwaway chopsticks to discourage their use.

Whether the government is truly responding to pressure from environmentalists is debatable. But the chopstick activism demonstrates a changing sense of the individual's relationship with the state, one that demands initiative, responsibility and participation from citizens.

Just two decades ago, the government controlled nearly all aspects of people's lives, from jobs to housing to education. But as China changes, "people are beginning to think deeply and independently, instead of just accepting what the government or society tells them," said Zhang Zhe, 24, who works for an environmental education group supported by British zoologist Jane Goodall. "Chopsticks are just an example. People are beginning to ponder even ordinary things."

Zhang began thinking about the environment as a child in the northeastern industrial city of Benxi. (A 1998 World Health Organization study found China had seven of the world's 10 most polluted cities.) She recalls being taught about the constellations in elementary school, then wondering why she could never see more than a few stars in the sky. "There was a steel factory in town, one of China's largest, and the sky was always gray," she said. "I never saw a blue sky growing up."

But it was not until college that Zhang concluded that she individually could make a difference. During a bicycle trip from Beijing to Shanghai, she insisted on gathering litter left behind by her traveling companions, until, eventually, they were shamed into picking up after themselves. Later, she helped start a student group dubbed the Green Volunteers. It had just five members at first, all of whom carried their own spoons and chopsticks. By the time she graduated, there were 200 Green Volunteers, and they had persuaded the school cafeterias to stop using disposable chopsticks.

"In the beginning, my classmates thought I was strange, and they would stare, but then we convinced them it was the right thing to do," said Zhang, who carries around a pair of stainless steel chopsticks in a cotton bag.

At Beijing's prestigious Qinghua University, students recently persuaded cafeteria officials to replace disposable chopsticks with plastic spoons that can be recycled. But other students complained because they weren't accustomed to the thin spoons and often cut their mouths on the sharp edges. And forget about forks.

Disposable chopsticks still come with orders of noodles. "You can't eat noodles with spoons," said Lei Yu, 20, one of the Qinghua activists. "We had to compromise."

Chopsticks have been China's primary eating tool since at least the Shang dynasty, which began around 1500 B.C., and they are the subject of countless folk tales. Traditionally, they are carved from bamboo, cedar, sandalwood, teak or pine, but the emperors favored silver ones, believing that they would turn black in the presence of poison.

It was only in the mid-1980s that disposable chopsticks, mass-produced from birch or poplar, appeared in China, long after Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong had begun using them. The Chinese government promoted their use to fight communicable disease and, at one point, required restaurants in various cities to use them.

The chopsticks gained in popularity as market reforms fueled an economic boom in China. Higher incomes and busier lifestyles meant more people eating out, more restaurants -- and more chopsticks. The reforms also spurred millions of peasants to move to the cities; these migrants often survive on take-out meals sold in Styrofoam boxes -- each with a pair of one-time chopsticks.

China now produces and discards more than 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks every year, cutting down as many as 25 million trees in the process, according to government statistics. Another 15 billion pairs are exported to Japan, South Korea and other countries. At the current rate of timber use, environmentalists warn, China will consume its remaining forests in about a decade.

The problem began seeping into the popular consciousness in the mid-1990s, as unsightly piles of Styrofoam boxes began appearing along roads and rail lines. People complained as plastic bags hung from trees like fruit and chopsticks littered the ground. Then, destructive floods in 1998 were blamed on deforestation and brought concern about disposable chopsticks to a peak.

Other Asian nations have struggled with disposable chopsticks, too. Nature lovers have singled out Japan for criticism because most of the 25 billion pairs it uses annually are made from other countries' trees. But South Korea has largely switched to metal chopsticks, banning the use of disposable ones six years ago in all restaurants of a certain size.

Liang Congjie, one of the most prominent environmentalists here, said no one expects the chopsticks crusade to solve China's environmental problems. "But it shows that some people are beginning to realize their consumer habits have an impact on the environment -- and that's a start."

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Chopstick controversy:

China eats its forest away

by Yang Zheng / Gemini News Service

(New Internationalist issue 311 - April 1999)

 Each day in Chengdu, China ­ capital of the world-renowned Sichuan cuisine ­ hundreds of thousands of people crowd into the city's 60,000 restaurants to eat barrowloads of meat, rice, eggs, vegetables and chillies. To do this they use disposable chopsticks which require 4,000 cubic metres of timber. 'For that amount you need to fell 100 trees with an average height of ten metres,' said Cai Shiyan, a deputy of the National People's Congress.

Throwaway chopsticks are now used in all but the poorest and the most expensive restaurants throughout China. The poor ones reuse bamboo chopsticks after cursory washing. The expensive ones prefer sanitized, lacquered-wood chopsticks. All the rest use disposable wooden chopsticks.

China is the biggest consumer, producer and exporter of chopsticks. It fells 25 million trees a year to make 45 billion pairs. Two-thirds are used in China and few are recycled.

But concern is growing over the environmental consequences. The Government is convinced that the devastating floods last summer, which killed more than 3,000 people, were caused by soil erosion due to excessive logging in river basins. Within weeks, the State Council banned logging and lumberjacks became planters in Sichuan Province.

Cai, who is campaigning for a ban on disposable chopsticks, says: 'It takes 30 to 40 years for a birch tree to mature, yet thousands are eaten away in the time it takes to finish a meal.'

China is severely short of trees ­ only 13.9 per cent of its 9.6 million square kilometres is covered by forest. Its amount of forest land per capita is ranked 121st in the world. Now 12 of the 40 state-owned logging companies have nothing left to fell. 'The remaining 80 million hectares of natural forests will disappear in a decade if this felling continues,' says Professor Shen Guofang, of Beijing Forestry University.

Cai suggests Chinese restaurants should go back to the old days and reuse chopsticks ­ but always sterilize them. 'Individuals could solve the problem themselves by carrying their chopsticks in their pockets,' said Cai.

At Beijing Forestry University, disposable chopsticks have been banned. Workers at the National Environmental Protection Agency now use their own and six well-known restaurants in Chengdu have stopped using the disposable kind. 'We need rigorous control over the felling of trees for disposable chopsticks,' insists Liu Yun, director of the China Chopsticks Museum. 'Export should be reduced, and production restricted.'

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by Yang Ling 03/07/2001

(China Internet Information Center)

Disposable chopsticks widely used by fast-food retailers used to be viewed as clean and convenient. But Professor Pang Jufeng, member of China People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), concurrently vice-president of Shaanxi Province Intellectual Association, proposed banning the production of such chopsticks.

"The proposal," said the professor when interviewed by China Internet Information Center, "comes from my experience and observation, and the public's outcry. 1. Not sanitary. Many small restaurants have kept the chopsticks in a jar unwashed probably for years. There's no guarantee for health if the chopsticks are contaminated before use. Some are used more than once; 2.Umproperly discarded chopsticks after use, some may carry contaminable disease, contaminate environment; 3.To lower the cost, manufacturers often make chopsticks in a rough way, their unpolished surface often cuts, 4.Throwaway chopsticks are ecologically expensive. Huge amount of trees are laid down for the production of the throwaway chopsticks. "It takes 10 years for a tree to grow up, as the old saying goes," Professor Pang continued. "But we are eating away our forests, what a waste!"

"After the banning," Prof. Pang maintained, "proper sterilization will be crucial for multi-use chopsticks. Failure in doing this will doubtlessly spread diseases. Tough inspection by supervising departments shall be frequent. Business failed to meet sanitary standards shall be closed temporarily or even permanently. Regular training for workers in food business should be enforced."

About some restaurants charging sterilization fee, Prof. Pang said, "So far there is no law to regulate market behaviors like this, the food sanitary regulations should be revised to cover sterilization of chopsticks. When most of the food businesses go by law and adopt a good habit, the ban of disposable chopsticks will be good to the country and people as well."

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American and Japanese corporations are running neck and neck in their competition to see who can produce the world's most absurdly wasteful, absolutely unnecessary paraphernalia, such as individually foil-wrapped tea bags, oversized compact disc packaging, and plastic wrapping for all. But Japan definitely reigns supreme when it comes to disposable chopsticks, or "waribashi," as they're known in the sushi bars, noodle shops, and fast-food joints ubiquitous to the island nation. Total world waribashi production stands at about 20 billion pair a year, most of which are used in Japan after they are imported from forests in such far-flung places as China, Indonesia, the Philippines, South Africa, and Canada.

While restaurants in other Asian countries wash and reuse chopsticks, the Japanese "don't want to use a chopstick that is used by someone else," explained Yuki Komayima, former president of the Canadian Chopstick Manufacturing Company (CCMC), to the Vancouver Sun. Komayima added that Japanese people traditionally believe chopsticks to be "given by the gods."

Such tradition, melded into modern industrial society, produces quite a twisted reality. A major player in today's waribashi God Squad is the Mitsubishi Group, one of the largest industrial conglomerates in the world, which owns a hefty chunk of CCMC. Mitsubishi created CCMC in a joint venture with a Japanese chemical corporation; they have now captured a third of Japan's waribashi market.

According to the Rainforest Action Network, which is organizing a boycott to halt Mitsubishi's forest destruction around the world, CCMC is clear-cutting vast swaths of aspen forests to produce 8 million pairs of chopsticks every day. CCMC feeds only the finest-grain aspen into its high-tech chopstick mill, leaving more than three-quarters of the trees in the field to rot or burn--outraging Canadian government foresters and activists alike. CCMC then ships the raw waribashi to Taiwan for finishing before they are imported to Japan. The waribashi are marketed with the motto, "chopsticks that protect nature," and then promptly discarded after use.

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(Frankfurt) Demand for disposable chopsticks in Japan is spurring an illegal timber trade in the forests of the Russian Far East which endangers rare animals there, according to an environmental group Tuesday.

More than half of the timber traded from Russia to Japan comes from the region, where around 50 per cent of the logging operations are estimated to be illegal, according to the World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF) in Frankfurt.

The research also points out that the Siberian Tiger and Amur Leopard, two of the most endangered cat species in the world, are now threatened with extinction because of the rampant illegal logging that fragments their Russian habitat.

It further highlights that the extent of ecologically and commercially valuable forests in the Russian Far East has decreased on average by 35 per cent.

This is due to over-harvesting of species of value, and a subsequent significant transformation of pristine forests into second growth forests, which have little or no value.

"The Russian-Japanese timber trade is plagued with timber smuggling, laundering through fake documents and cut-and-run timber operations," said Anatoly Kotlobay, WWF-Russia forest expert. "We are monitoring it with the ultimate goal to halt its illegal side."

The Russian and Japanese governments could also make a significant contribution to reducing illegal logging, the organisation said. WWF is calling on them to enter into a trade agreement which specifies that the timber that Japan imports from Russia derives from legal and sustainable sources.

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