Well, this will probably be the first and last post on my blog about something that I haven’t done personally in Japan, but I felt the need to write about it. After reading this article on CNN.com about how China is going to begin taxing disposable chopsticks because of their immense impact on the environment, I started to mull on this topic a bit. This article is also very interesting, and here is an excerpt from it:

“China now produces and discards more than 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks every year, cutting down as many as 25 million trees in the process, according to government statistics. Another 15 billion pairs are exported to Japan, South Korea and other countries. At the current rate of timber use, environmentalists warn, China will consume its remaining forests in about a decade.”

For the past 7 months, every time I walk into a restaurant, I’m usually greeted by a table with a cup with many pairs of chopsticks inside of it, waiting for me to take one when my food comes. I honestly can’t recall one restaurant where there were plastic chopsticks to use. Its an incredibly depressing thought to think that the largest country in the world might deplete its forests just for the sake of disposable chopsticks. I think the next time I go out, I’m going to take along a pair of plastic chopsticks to use so that I won’t have to contribute to the waste. I only wish I had read about this 7 months ago….