I'd like to order Shrimp Fried Rice and a metal fork

Let me start this by saying that even before my left hand became bedeviled with the arthritis, I always lacked the manual coordination required to eat with chopsticks. I watched instructional videos, I followed the directions on the chopstick packages, I even had one-on-one tutoring from someone proficient in the art of maneuvering food from plate to mouth with the use of two skinny sticks.

"All to Noah Vale," as I recently saw someone write. They meant, "all to no avail," and that's the deal with me and chopsticks. Pass the fork, please.  And the shrimp fried rice. 

I do understand that people have been using the sticks for over 5,000 years, and that a third of the people in the world have mastered the art for their daily dining. But now I feel a little better about letting restaurants wash the fork I use, because a great many of the world's chopsticks are single-use, and that is leading to a serious environmental problem.

It can't be anything but a problem when you think that 80 billion pairs of sticks per year are tossed into landfills. In China, they figure 100 acres of aspen, birch, and bamboo are deforested every DAY to make more chopsticks. There are always efforts underway to get people to switch to reusables, but since disposable is so easy....you know how it goes.

Chopstick factory

Felix Böck, of Vancouver, is working on the problem and trying to get people not to use single-use sticks. The founder of ChopValue, a company that uses recycled chopsticks to create "stunning, high-performance office furniture, home decor, kitchen accessories and games," Böck says, "In Vancouver alone, we’re throwing out 100,000 chopsticks a day. They’re traveling 6,000 or 7,000 miles from where they’re manufactured in Asia to end up on our lunch table for 30 minutes.”

When you put it that way, it seems foolish.

Böck started his business in 2016, on the grounds that if people won't stop using single-use sticks, there's something better than just dumping them in landfills. His people pick up around 350,000 used chopsticks from over 300 restaurants every week, and turn them into bookshelves, cutting boards, coasters, desks, and custom decorations. Böck says his outfit has kept over 50 million pairs of sticks out of landfills since it began.

“Once you see the volume, you think maybe that little humble chopstick can be the start of something big,” Böck says. “My expertise is in bamboo, so I always looked at chopsticks differently. I used to joke to my friends that I would make something out of chopsticks, since most of the ones we use in North America are made of bamboo.”

Of course, you don't just pick up a barrel of used bamboo from The House of Lo Mein and turn that into a set of shelves. First, the sticks are coated in a water-based resin, then sterilized at 200 degrees for five hours. Then a machine breaks the wood into composite slab of board, which get sanded, polished, painted or whatever.

And then, “This material is then the core piece for everything from desks and table tops to home decor,” Böck says.

In case you want to try your hands at making yourself a desk from your old chopsticks, keep ordering from China Delight until you have 10,854 sticks! That's how many it takes.

And, in a neat circular loop, there is a restaurant chain called Pacific Poke that recycles its chopsticks with ChopValue, and then buys decorations and new tables for its restaurants from them!

“I think change starts small, and change can be a very relatable thing that we all know from daily life,” Böck says. “Right now, we’re focusing on the chopstick because it’s a very powerful story, but I think there are so many other urban resources where we can make this work.”