Chop-Sticking It To The Greens

The grand chopstick protest is raging throughout China ... well, cropping up here and there in big cities like Beijing, where this protest apparently forced the fast-food noodle chain Noodles Loves Noodles (catchy, eh?) to switch to plastic chopsticks.

According to the WSJ, the Chinese use 63 billion pairs of snap-apart, throw-away wooden chopsticks a year. They're not made from virgin forest trees, but from birch, poplar and bamboo, which grow fast and are not endangered.

The enviros would have them replaced with plastic? Plastic? Made from oil, processed in effluent-leaking, fume-belching factories?

Well, yes. Or, of course, you could follow the approach used by China's BYOC (bring your own chopsticks) activists. Again, WSJ:

B.Y.O.C. is becoming a way of life for young Chinese activists like Margaret Yang, a 28-year-old market researcher for Intel in Beijing. On a recent lunchtime visit to a Beijing branch of the Chinese hot-pot chain Little Sheep, Ms. Yang put her ideals into action. When the waitress approached with a fistful of disposable chopsticks, Ms. Yang flashed her personal chopsticks, sending her scurrying away.

After a lunch of lamb strips, mushrooms and bok choy, Ms. Yang illustrated the cleanup protocol, requesting a cup of hot water from the waitress to rinse her chopsticks in, before slipping them into the organic cotton sack she uses to carry them.

Hat-tipper Jim notes with proper tone:

OK, let's see if I get this straight.

Instead of using some "...roughly 63 billion pairs each year" of disposable chopsticks that are "...typically made from fast-growing woods like birch, poplar and bamboo that are not endangered"..."and often uses leftover wood that is not suitable for other industries", we are going to request 63 billion cups (that's nearly four billion GALLONS, BTW) of HEATED water, instead.

And people wonder why I think that most environmentalists are just plain nuts! HA!

Jim, Jim, Jim. It's green image that matters. Please don't bother Greenies and Warmies with troublesome things like facts and logic.