In another effort to encourage people to use reusable chopsticks the China Environmental Protection Foundation has sculpted a chopstick tree and handed out reusable chopsticks.
About 100 acres of tree are cut down a day to create single use wooden chopsticks.
"Think here of a forest larger than Tiananmen Square - or 100 American football fields - being sacrificed every day. That works out to roughly 16 million to 25 million felled trees a year.
To do this, the CEPF gathered 30,000 pairs of used disposable chopsticks from restaurants in Shanghai, washed them and built a tree sculpture, five meters tall high. The tree was chopped down and it was then displayed on a busy downtown street in Shanghai. Volunteers handed out reusable chopsticks to people passing by.
According to the CEPF only 20 years worth of trees are left to continue to make the disposable wooden chopsticks.
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I don't know what is more amazing... that China consumes that many trees or that it is a sign of how much forest was once in China...
ReplyDeleteWow, what an object lesson!
ReplyDeleteI sure didn't know that much forest was required for chopsticks.
Learn something everyday!
Wooden chopsticks are perfectly reusable...just like wooden spoons. I put them in the dishwasher, so they get those superhigh temps.
ReplyDeleteYikes ... I hope they're doing a lot more than publicity stunts. Can't chopsticks be made from renewable resources (bamboo, maybe?). Then, again, this is China we're talking about. The government should be able to step in (sort of).
ReplyDeleteBest,
Marty
That's a brilliant awareness/action campaign.
ReplyDelete