Japan will try to turn the millions of wooden chopsticks that go discarded each year into biofuel to ease the country's energy shortage, officials said Wednesday.Biofuels are seen as an alternative clean energy resource that can reduce dependence on Middle East oil and lessen the impact of global warming. Japan has virtually no natural energy resources of its own.Restaurants and convenience stores generally hand out disposable, wooden chopsticks without asking. Each of Japan's 127 million people uses an average of 200 sets a year, meaning 90,000 tons of wood, according to government data.Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries plans to set up boxes to collect used chopsticks, ministry official Toyohisa Aoyama said. Disposable chopsticks have historically been a cash cow for Japan's forestry industry, which says it uses timber from thinning that would have otherwise been dumped.
(The Hindu, 23rd August 2007)
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