Japan faces chopsticks crisis

Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Monday May 15, 2006
The Guardian


Millions of Japanese diners could soon be deprived of their favourite
wooden chopsticks following China's decision to impose a 5% tax on the
utensils because of concerns over deforestation.
The move is already beginning to affect restaurants and caterers in
Japan, which gets through 25bn pairs of disposable wooden chopsticks a
year - or 200 pairs a person - 97% of which come from China.

Chinese chopstick exporters responded to the tax increase by raising
prices by around 30%, with another 20% increase to follow. The price of
chopsticks has already risen from one yen a pair to more than one and a
half yen, with producers also blaming rising transportation and raw
material costs.


Article continues

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"We're not in an emergency situation yet, but there has been some
impact," Ichiro ***uoka, director of the Japan Chopsticks Import
Association, told the Associated Press.
After years of relying on the ubiquitous "waribashi" chopsticks, which
diners pull apart before they eat and throw away afterwards, Japan's
restaurants are changing their wasteful ways amid reports that China
will stop exporting wooden chopsticks altogether in 2008.

In February a restaurant chain in Osaka replaced wooden chopsticks with
plastic ones at all of its 760 outlets and offers small discounts to
customers who bring their own.

Other restaurants are turning to chopsticks made from bamboo and some
convenience stores give them out only on request.

Until 20 years ago about half of all disposable chopsticks used in
Japan were made domestically but were gradually edged out by cheap
imports from China, which produces 45bn pairs a year - the equivalent
of about 25m trees.





Special report
Japan

Waribashi

Did you know, Japan is the number one consumer of rainforest wood,
importing half of all that is sold in the world? It imports nearly five
times the value of timber of South Korea, the number two user. China,
Taiwan, and Italy are the next on the list. Nearly all of the trees in
the Phillipines, Thailand, Indonesia, and other South East Asian
countries are gone. The rainforests are disappearing at 20,000,000
hectares every year - an area about the size of Great Britain.

Much of the wood Japan buys is used in construction. (The government
has an unusually large budget for construction, with 16% of the
work-force employed there.) Imported logs are made into plywood, which
is then used for molds while pouring concrete. Often, after being used
once or twice, they are incinerated.

Waribashi (disposable wooden chopsticks) waste the second greatest
amount of wood. The use of waribashi began in the 1870's. At that time
they were made from scraps left by woodworkers. But now, about 410,000
cubic meters of timber are cut every year just to make waribashi. Japan
consumes 130,000,000 waribashi everyday, 11,000,000,000 pairs a year.

Because Japan's technology is so advanced, and because it's traditional
lifestyle was not a wasteful one, surely this problem can be improved.
A substitute should be available to make concrete forms, waribashi,
paper and cardboard, rather than using irreplaceable rainforest trees.
How can we help?

Perhaps, most importantly, be aware of such issues, and share your
knowledge with other people. In times where governments are failing to
find a solution, it's the responsibility of the people to make change
happen.

And, an easy way to make a big difference is to refuse waribashi when
they are offered to you in stores and restaurants. Carry your own
chopsticks with you!


http://www.geocities.com/green_in_ja...waribashi.html

" Carry your own
chopsticks with you!"



I do.

wrote:

> Japan faces chopsticks crisis
>
> Justin McCurry in Tokyo
> Monday May 15, 2006
> The Guardian
>
>
> Millions of Japanese diners could soon be deprived of their favourite
> wooden chopsticks following China's decision to impose a 5% tax on the
> utensils because of concerns over deforestation.
> The move is already beginning to affect restaurants and caterers in
> Japan, which gets through 25bn pairs of disposable wooden chopsticks a
> year - or 200 pairs a person - 97% of which come from China.
>
> Chinese chopstick exporters responded to the tax increase by raising
> prices by around 30%, with another 20% increase to follow. The price
> of chopsticks has already risen from one yen a pair to more than one
> and a half yen, with producers also blaming rising transportation and
> raw material costs.


Crisis? Today a yen is worth $0.008977 US. A price increase of half a yen
is under half a penny. At 200 pair a year per person, that's under $1.
Perhaps I'm missing the point, but it's hard to see how this can be much of
an issue.

--
Ken Blake
Please reply to the newsgroup

--
Ken Blake
Please reply to the newsgroup

> wrote in message
ups.com...
> " Carry your own
> chopsticks with you!"
>
>
>
> I do.
>

Although I am not knowledgeable enough about the timber industry to fully
appreciate what
410,000 cubic meters annual consumption means comparatively, I agree that
the global consumption of timber as well
as all natural resources is probably too high. In the sense that it may
negatively affect our environment.
And perhaps we shouldn't be using disposable choptsticks.
On the other hand, perhaps we shouldn't be holding olympics either.

http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0501-papua.html

M

it is NOT about the $$ ken.... it is about the trees.... was that not the
obvious issue?!

Bimmerfan wrote:

> it is NOT about the $$ ken.... it is about the trees.... was that not
> the obvious issue?!


No, not at all. The message I replied to talked about the price increases in
disposable wooden chopsticks. Those prices increases may be substantial,
percentage-wise, but are nearly meaningless in actual money.

The deforestation issues, on the other hand, are real, and should be of
significant concern to everyone, Japanese or not.

--
Ken Blake
Please reply to the newsgroup

Also, I find my own chopsticks - nice plastic ones, and (Korean) steel
- much more aesthetically pleasing than the rough splintery
disposables, plus I'm used to them. Plus the origin of the disposables
is dubious at best, many being made by slave labor in the Chinese
gulags under very unsanitary conditions, despite the fact that they are
sold in China as "sanitary chopsticks".

wrote:

> Also, I find my own chopsticks - nice plastic ones, and (Korean) steel
> - much more aesthetically pleasing than the rough splintery
> disposables, plus I'm used to them.



You've said before that you bring your own chopsticks. Personally, I would
never do that, regardless of how much more esthetically pleasing my own
might be. It feels very insulting to me: "Your chopsticks aren't good enough
for me. I'll use my own."

Would you bring your own more esthetically pleasing knife and fork to a
Western restaurant?

--
Ken Blake
Please reply to the newsgroup

I agree with the sentiment in the article above:

"... In times where governments are failing to
find a solution, it's the responsibility of the people to make change
happen.


And, an easy way to make a big difference is to refuse waribashi when
they are offered to you in stores and restaurants. Carry your own
chopsticks with you!"




ww

Ken Blake wrote:
> might be. It feels very insulting to me: "Your chopsticks aren't good enough
> for me. I'll use my own."
>
> Would you bring your own more esthetically pleasing knife and fork to a
> Western restaurant?

I've brought my own knife to a restaurant where several times before
I'd had to ask for a sharper steak knife (it was a nice place but they
used those cheap wide-blade serrated chop-house knives, and in that
town people had a habit of grinding their knife into the plate when
cutting anything). And yes, I *meant* it as an insult, and was happy
that they got the point, even though I doubt it changed anything but
their sense of remorse.

Personally, I think the wood chopsticks are the easiest to use. The
texture makes them easy to handle and they hold the food with less
pressure. Plastic and metal take more balance and allow fewer means of
grasping; they make eating wet noodles almost impossible. Bamboo is
okay for grip, but tends to splinter a lot more than wood does. You
can spend a whole evening peeling splinters from a bamboo stick and end
up with no stick left at all. And I hate sticks that don't taper
evenly from end to end. If I can't pick up a single flying-fish egg
without switching my grip, they're junk.

Meta: you suppose they've been having this argument in China for about
5,000 years?

Well, let's modernize it:

Maybe there's some new material or molding process that can give the
performance characteristics of wood (including possibly disposability)
without costing 170 million board-feet of old-growth forest a year
(about 20,000 houses worth, or about 1.5 million trees). On the other
hand, 410,000 m^3 is only about 1/8500th of the world's annual wood
production of 3.4 billion m^3, more than half of which is still
consumed as fuel. About 80% of Asia's wood is used for fuel.

So I'm not sure if ending the chopstick trade is going to be all that
big a help. Getting them a nuclear reactor or two and a wave of rural
electrification projects would probably free up enough trees to
overwhelm the chopstick issue by a hundred-fold.

--Blair

> -- Anyway, re Ken's comments before - I've never gotten any negative
> reaction from using my own chopsticks in Asian restaurants.

You're kidding? EVERY TIME I get these funny looks when I bring mine
into the "Madras" to have a curry. Or did you mean Oriental Restaurant?

> wrote in message
ups.com...
> "Personally, I think the wood chopsticks are the easiest to use. The
> texture makes them easy to handle and they hold the food with less
> pressure. "
>
> -- Yes, that's true. The article above even mentions it.
>
> "Plastic and metal take more balance and allow fewer means of
> grasping; they make eating wet noodles almost impossible. "
>
> -- Nope - just takes practice. Most Viet. restaurants use plastic
> (long Chinese) chopsticks and 99% of the people there are eating wet
> noodles - pho. Helpful hint: stick yer face closer to the bowl!
>
>
>
> -- Anyway, re Ken's comments before - I've never gotten any negative
> reaction from using my own chopsticks in Asian restaurants. Today I
> was in a good Chinese buffet and the waitresses were talking to me
> about my use of Korean steel chopsticks.
> One of them was from Japan, the other from Taiwan. So I asked them if
> it was considered rude for me to bring my own chopsticks. They told me
> that it wasn't, just very unusual, since nobody does it in Japan or
> Taiwan.
>
>

Rather than debating the issue of whether to bring your own chopsticks to a
restaurant or not, perhaps we should simply remember the fact that in Japan
eating sushi with your hands is perfectly traditional and acceptable.
So much for the disposable chopsticks....unless you order an appetizer.

Musashi

On Wed, 24 May 2006 14:33:38 GMT, "Musashi" >
mumbled something like:

>
> wrote in message
oups.com...
>> "Personally, I think the wood chopsticks are the easiest to use. The
>> texture makes them easy to handle and they hold the food with less
>> pressure. "
>>
>> -- Yes, that's true. The article above even mentions it.
>>
>> "Plastic and metal take more balance and allow fewer means of
>> grasping; they make eating wet noodles almost impossible. "
>>
>> -- Nope - just takes practice. Most Viet. restaurants use plastic
>> (long Chinese) chopsticks and 99% of the people there are eating wet
>> noodles - pho. Helpful hint: stick yer face closer to the bowl!
>>
>>
>>
>> -- Anyway, re Ken's comments before - I've never gotten any negative
>> reaction from using my own chopsticks in Asian restaurants. Today I
>> was in a good Chinese buffet and the waitresses were talking to me
>> about my use of Korean steel chopsticks.
>> One of them was from Japan, the other from Taiwan. So I asked them if
>> it was considered rude for me to bring my own chopsticks. They told me
>> that it wasn't, just very unusual, since nobody does it in Japan or
>> Taiwan.
>>
>>
>
>Rather than debating the issue of whether to bring your own chopsticks to a
>restaurant or not, perhaps we should simply remember the fact that in Japan
>eating sushi with your hands is perfectly traditional and acceptable.
>So much for the disposable chopsticks....unless you order an appetizer.
>
>Musashi
>
>

or sashimi.

and speaking of, anyone check out that etiquette blog thing that was
posted a few days ago? It was interesting but it that all true? I
guess I'm just a crude 'westerner' but it made me wonder.

Big.

> You're kidding? EVERY TIME I get these funny looks when I bring mine
> into the "Madras" to have a curry. Or did you mean Oriental Restaurant?



Ah, you're probably just self-conscious. I never got funny looks in
Indian restaurants - well, no funnier than I ordinarily get anyway! -
because of my chopsticks. In Indian restaurants they usually just
don't seem to pay any attention to what I'm eating with.

Oriental people are generally much more conformist than I am. There
would need to be some kind of official conservation movement started
before they would start bringing their own chopsticks en masse.

I'm not sure, but I think that South Korea has banned the use of
disposable chopsticks in restaurants.

> You're kidding? EVERY TIME I get these funny looks when I bring mine
> into the "Madras" to have a curry. Or did you mean Oriental Restaurant?



Ah, you're probably just self-conscious. I never got funny looks in
Indian restaurants - well, no funnier than I ordinarily get anyway! -
because of my chopsticks. In Indian restaurants they usually just
don't seem to pay any attention to what I'm eating with.

Oriental people are generally much more conformist than I am. There
would need to be some kind of official conservation movement started
before they would start bringing their own chopsticks en masse.

I'm not sure, but I think that South Korea has banned the use of
disposable chopsticks in restaurants.

China's Chopsticks Crusade Feeds Environmental Movement

By Philip P. Pan, The Washington Post, 6 February 2001
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.



http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/55/222.html

Since you started this thread, WWW, I've got to say this article ties it
up nicely. So many things ignored and taken for granted take new weight
in a realized finite world. I wonder if the first whittler of chopsticks
thought of a day when we would consider the threat they pose to our
survival?

Take your chopsticks with you and politely return your unused set. One
at a time is better than none at all.

wrote:
> China's Chopsticks Crusade Feeds Environmental Movement
>
> By Philip P. Pan, The Washington Post, 6 February 2001
> 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.
>
>
>
> http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/55/222.html
>

--
- Peace,George

...... and if you want to know why we're in the mess we're in
READ "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins
ISBN 0-452-28708-1

N 37°49'37.31
W 122°25'24.04

wrote:
> 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?

Yes. It proves that the Chinese aren't immune to ignorance couched in
emotional fallacy. (Actually, we already knew that, but this is
another clear data point.)

As I already posted, 80% of Asia's wood is burned for fuel.

> 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.

And since disposable chopsticks account for about a tenth of a percent
of the consumption, ending their use will extend that deadline by a
long weekend.

> 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.

But I bet most household heating and cooking is still done on
charcoal-fired ovens.

> Liang Congjie, one of the most prominent environmentalists here, said
> no one expects the chopsticks crusade to solve China's environmental
> problems.

Finally, a clue emerges.

> But it shows that some people are beginning to realize their
> consumer habits have an impact on the environment -- and that's a
> start.

Some. The question is whether you can get a billion people to follow a
democratic movement in a communist nation. And whether the government
wants that to become a precedent.

--Blair

This was an issue first devolved about 30 years ago, you idiots!

VUCK THE RIGHT WING~!

Old Growth Spruce in the Pacific Northwest went mostly to make
disposable chopsticks. Let the Japanese eat the meals with their

VUCK THE RIGHT WING SH own plasticized dung.