GreenBusiness

100 Million ”My Chopsticks” Going Mobile to Save the Day

By hiromiJan 29th, 2008

greenz.jp/グリーンズ　マイ箸の輪
Creative Commons. Some Rights Reserved. Photo by cava_cavien

As one of the few chopstick nations of the world, Japan uses a humongous amount of disposable wooden chopsticks. They are so called as “waribashi”, where “wari” means to split open and “bashi” comes from “hashi”, meaning chopsticks you must split in two to use.

An estimated of 2.5 billion waribashis are used annually in many Japanese restaurants. But it’s ironic that most of these super cheap waribashis comes from China, a country where only 17% of the land is covered by forest, far less than 68% for Japan. It’s also a double destruction: at source by killing trees, and at end of the life-cycle by wasting it. “Mottainai!” is how Nobel Prize laurate Wangari Maathai would comment on it–a japanese word for “What a waste!”.

But things are changing and many restaurants and people are becoming aware of the problems caused by this disposable waribashi. Marche group, which operates the nation-wide chain-restaurants Suikoden and Hakkenden, is encouraging customers to take their “Mai Hashi”, or “My chopsticks” on the go with their ““100 Million My Beloved Chopsticks” campaign”.

They have stopped using waribashi in all of their restaurants and switched to reusable plastic chopsticks. To drive this campaign, some chains even go as far as providing a “My chopsticks deposit box” for customers!

On their website, they provide freely downloadable banners, logo and posters to print and help the mass get hooked up to this campaign. In their newsletter “Ai no Mai Hashi Tsuushin”, literally translatable to “My Beloved Chopsticks Communication”, they report on initiatives by individuals, companies and restaurants who encourage others to take their chopsticks on the go. 100 million “My chopsticks” going mobile may be an alternative and bright prospect for saving trees.

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