| Choice: Chopsticks or
Trees |
| I love my chopsticks, and whenever I eat any kind of Asian food I ask for
them. I use them at China King, Thai Luang, Hunan Herndon, Oriental Express, Nguyen's
Deli, Luau Garden, Le Grille, Pacific, Cheng's and dozens of other places. |
| I don't use them at Cantina D'Italia, The Tortilla Factory, Cincinnati Cafe,
Saint Basil, The Outback, Papa Johns or Clyde's. |
| Chopsticks are perfect for rice, noodles, bite-sized pieces of meat and other
salads. |
| They're terrible for soup. |
| But now I'm really worried. Most chopsticks served by restaurants are the
disposable kind that come in a little paper pouch and you break apart before using.
If restaurants follow the latest craze in China, disposable chopsticks will be
out of fashion and you'll have to bring your own. |
| Bring your own eating utensils? Sure enough. |
| It seems in China there is a movement to stop wasting trees by making them
into chopsticks. Here's a quote from The Washington Post this week: "Just
imagine," said Kang Dahu, "years from now when my grandchildren ask
me what happened to the trees, I'll have to say, We made them into chopsticks.'" |
| Matter of fact, China cuts down 25 million trees every year to make 45 billion
pairs of chopsticks, the utensil of choice in China since 1500 B.C. |
| Reusing chopsticks in China has become such a movement that the finance ministry
might put a tax on disposable chopsticks to stop their use. And restaurant-goers
are now carrying their own chopsticks made out of stainless steel and other products. |
| So why all the fuss over chopsticks? The way I see it, it's the little things
that count. |
| I hate plastic utensils Americans use at picnics and birthday parties; I despise
paper plates and styrofoam cups, and I abhor drinking out of aluminum cans. |
| Disposable chopsticks? Well, I don't mind those so much. At home I have reusable
ones; my children bought me a bundle of them years ago for a Father's Day present.
I guess I feel better about not cutting down a tree to use as my spoon. |
| But, you say, the newspaper industry is one of the greatest users of trees
to make a product. That is true, along with hundreds of other industries, like
office paper producers, companies that make grocery bags, napkins, toilet paper,
magazines, direct mail flyers, computer printout paper, and thousands upon thousands
of boxes and cards to display merchandise. |
| On a recent trip I bought an item at a drugstore that must have had at least
four layers of cardboard, plastic, paper, and more cardboard. It took me forever
to get to the producta small tube of Chapstick (not chopstick)and what I had
left was a pile of useless paper. |
| I wait for the day when technology catches up with us so I can deliver The
Observer to your house on something other than paper. We do so already, via observernews.com,
our web site. But people still want their paper products. |
| But maybe if we start our environmental concerns with something as small and
ubiquitous as chopsticks, we can solve our other, bigger problems of the wasteful
use of this planet. |
| Anyone know where I can buy stainless steel chopsticks? Or maybe I'll just
start eating with my fingers. |
| And that's Our Town this week. |
