Green Chopsticks

Short citations from articles

• Sticks and Moans, Taiga News
• Blame Greenpeace when Toronto loses bid, Toronto Free Press
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[excerpt:]

The Chinese government is considering a ban on disposable chopsticks in an effort to conserve its rapidly diminishing forests, reports the New Internationalist (April 1999). Each year, 25 million trees are felled to manufacture the 45 billion pairs of chopsticks the Chinese use and export. The effects of the manufacture of chopsticks are not reserved to China alone. A large chopstick factory in Fort Nelson, British Columbia, for example, is fed with timber from the Fort Liard Dene community's traditional land area.

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by Judi McLeod

Toronto Free Press 3(12) (Feb 28 - Mar 19, 2001)

[excerpt:]

When China made its pitch for the 2008 Summer Games, its Communist regime promised that 1,000 of Beijing's noodle houses will change to reusable plastic chopsticks, eliminating at least 365 million pairs of wooden chopsticks a year.

The move to disposable plastic chopsticks is meant as a symbol to Olympic inspectors to show that if China gets its first-ever Games, it will overlook no detail in cleaning up the ancient capital's notoriously polluted environment.

The reusable plastic chopsticks will save 30,000 trees annually, helping to keep down dust storms and prove that Beijing is committed to its goal of "a green Olympic Games".

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