Use Your Fork

My boy's, A & G, were talking this morning on the radio about chopsticks. Get this: according to an article by Thomas Friedman, China consumes 45 billion pairs of wooden chopsticks each year. This equals 1.66 million meters of timber, or 25 million full grown trees annually! And that doesn't include the many tons (in weight) of additional chopsticks that are exported to other countries. In total, 300 factories, employing 60,000 people, make disposable wooden chopsticks in China. Shnikeys!

I never would have imagined that such an innocuous item like a pair of splintery chopsticks could pose such an environmental threat. The next time I am eating a tasty bowl of Mongolian BBQ I will opt to use my traditional, reusable fork instead of the chopsticks.