Turning Chopsticks Back To Trees
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Though most people think that chopsticks are made from scrap wood, they are actually made from trees - Not just any trees, but Aspens, sometimes also known as the 'mother of forests' because they protect young Conifer trees and provide a rich habitat for birds and mammals. And, we are not talking chopping down a few trees, but millions of them!
It is estimated that the world's biggest user, China cuts down 3.8 million trees annually, to manufacture the over 5.7 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks that the country goes through each year.
To try make people aware of the destruction they are causing with this one small habit, environmental activist company Greenpeace, paired up with advertisement agency Ogilvy & Mather, and came up with this brilliant idea - Turn the used chopsticks back into trees. While it was a great idea, it was dirty work - for it involved visiting all these Chinese restaurants and collecting used chopsticks from the trash.
However, thanks to 200 hard-working volunteers from 20 Beijing Universities, they managed to gather and clean 80,000 pairs of disposable chopsticks, within just three weeks. Then, under the guidance of Chinese designer, Xu Yinhai, they set about building the trees.
On December 20th, four, 5-ft. tall chopstick trees were planted at Beijing's most popular mall, The Place. Over the year, the trees will be moved around and displayed at universities and other prominent public places. Greenpeace is hoping they will be able to convince people all over China to switch to re-usable chopsticks and help save the country's scarce natural resources.
What a great idea! Now if they had only stuck in some fortune cookies for the leaves, life would have been perfect!
Sources:odditycentral.com,china.org.cn, greenpeace.org/eastasia
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269 Comments
- Emalie B. ( allen)over 14 yearsI think it is very wierd how they turned chopsticks back into trees. I wonder if they do it just for deceration because I don't think they give off oxygen.
- M@R!S0Lover 14 yearsCool and i hope the whole world can do their part and recycle wat they mostly use!
- MELbel2997 :pover 14 yearsThat is soo cool. I am super excited that China is going green and reusing their chopsticks. i wish i could have one of those chopstick trees!!!!!
- Maddie Moose :)over 14 yearsi think that is pretty cool. i get almost all of my news stories for daily spot in news crew from dogonews.com. i love this website! =D
- Marley W Torbensonover 14 yearsThat is so cool. When I was looking at some of the pictures I saw that the tree looked like lots of chopsticks glued together. Also it looked like the tree was totally straight on all of its angles!
- Hannah S Torbensonover 14 yearsThat would be really cool to have trees made of chopsticks. I wonder how they got the copsticks to stay up? They do really look like real trees. How cool is that!
- Megan G. (Torbenson)over 14 yearsThat is very cool how they can make trees out of chopsticks. And the fact that they replanted those trees is awesome!That has to be hard to put the chopsticks together and make them stay there.
- Skye B.over 14 yearsGO GREEN! I like the part at the end were they say "Now if they had only stuck in some fortune cookies for the leaves, life would have been perfect!" . Maby going green is their new hobbie.
- Faith G.over 14 yearsThose trees look sharp! And I don't think people should eat with those chop sticks because they're in nature, so they might get dirty.
- tyler tover 14 yearsHow do they do it. and what is point. they dont give you air