I have to say that I am way more comfortable with fork and knife than chopsticks but ‘PingMag’, one of my favorite information sources in Asia, got my attention with their Portable Chopstick Design article.
It allowed me to discover that most Tokyo residents use up to 3 pair of disposable chopsticks called ‘Waribashi’ in Japanese. According to the Waribashi Conundrum in ‘Japan Visitor’ it amounts to 24 Billion pairs a year for the whole country.
Ryoko who wrote the piece thinks it is a terrible waste and that everyone would be better off with well designed reusable ones.
In the US, Donna Keiko Ozawa organized the Waribashi Project in San Francisco to collect the chopsticks for Art Projects. Visit their BLOG for more details.
I could not resist using PingMag’s illustration on the proper use of chopsticks.