By Zhu Shugu 13 Oct 2005

Recently, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the Standardization Administration, the State Forestry Bureau and the Ministry of Commerce of the PRC have jointly announced a series of state mandatory standards for disposable chopsticks.

The debate on whether disposable chopsticks should continue to be used has carried on for years. Supporters reckon that disposable chopsticks are very easy to use, are favored by restaurants and consumers, and have formed an industry with significant economic benefit. Critics deem that disposable chopsticks, especially those made of wood, are an astonishing waste of forest resources.

Ministerial bodies' publication of state mandatory standards can be seen as the government's response to the public debate. This response reiterated that the state allows the manufacturing of disposable chopsticks. It is only the relevant sanitary standards that are being emphasized.

Your editor believes that such policies aiming at regulating the industry of manufacturing disposable chopsticks will inevitably disappoint the large number of people who oppose the mass production and export of such products. This disappointment results from a concern that our country's forest resources are being overly exploited.

China has become the major manufacturing country of disposable chopsticks. As early as year 2001, there were over 300 companies manufacturing disposable chopsticks, employing around 60,000 workers. Statistics show that since 2000, China has been annually exporting 140,000 to 160,000 tons of disposable chopsticks, which are valued at around US$120 to 160 million. Exports to Japan and Korea amount to over 15 billion pairs of chopsticks every year.

Japan has the world's highest forest coverage, which comprises 69% of the country's land. However, it imports all 25 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks that it consumes every year. The Japanese even recycle the used chopsticks to produce paper pulp. A country with such rich forest resources is so “stingy” as to import all its disposable chopsticks instead of manufacturing them. Paradoxically, a country that has a scarcity of such resources ( China has a forest coverage of merely 13%, ranking in 121 st place globally) is cutting down a large volume of trees to produce disposable chopsticks and trade them for foreign exchange. This is indeed worth pondering.

This series of mandatory state standards stipulated the sanitary standards for disposable chopsticks. These standards protect the consumers' rights; however, the negative effect is also obvious. These stricter sanitary standards will only promote the marketability of Chinese disposable chopsticks amongst foreign consumers, resulting in an increase in the export volume. When the disposable chopsticks, certified as in compliance with the state's mandatory standards, are used, the consumers' concern about unsanitary disposable chopsticks will dissolve. People will then freely enjoy the use of disposable chopsticks. One can foresee more corporations entering the industry of manufacturing disposable chopsticks, causing an increase in export and domestic sales. This will bring forth more tearing down of forests, more soil erosion and an ever-graver ecological disaster.

Regulating industry development by means of formulating state mandatory standards is a right thing intuitively. However, the disposable chopsticks industry in itself defies the principles of recycle-economy. Your editor believes that the most important thing at the moment is not to formulate state mandatory standards regulating the manufacturing of disposable chopsticks, but rather to seriously contemplate whether the development of this industry should be encouraged at all.

Resource: Hua Nan News, October 12 th , 2005

Translated by Christina

Edited by Tina