Chopsticks are a very popular dining tool in Asian countries. With the development of the economy, disposable bamboo chopsticks are an indispensable item in every restaurant in fast-paced daily life. Disposable chopsticks have the characteristics of being clean, fast and cheap, but The waste of resources and environmental pollution caused by disposable chopsticks is also a major problem.
I am a manufacturer of disposable bamboo chopsticks from China, but now I am more concerned about the issue of repeated recycling of disposable chopsticks, because it is not only related to the sustainable development of the disposable chopsticks industry, but also related to environmental issues.
The fast-growing forest for making disposable chopsticks is a plantation with a short rotation period, which is widely used in papermaking, home decoration, chopsticks and other industries. In the eyes of ordinary people, it seems that there is a fast-growing forest, and the disposable chopsticks manufacturing industry that requires a lot of wood will not cause damage to natural forest resources. However, forestry experts have different opinions.
First of all, the fast-growing forest does not grow as fast as people think. More importantly, the fast-growing forest is more harmful to the environment and to the land. Most of the fast-growing forests in the industry are unified, fail to achieve the ecological benefits of biodiversity, and cannot form a balanced ecological chain, so it is prone to pests and diseases. Only the consumption of land resources is not cultivated, coupled with the birth of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and pesticides, and the rapid depletion of land. In the countryside, many farmers know that it is difficult to regenerate other things in places where they grow fast.
There have been media suggestions to recycle these chopsticks into pulp for papermaking. In fact, recycling disposable chopsticks for pulp and paper, many people have had this idea, and many people have tried this idea, and many experts have studied this idea. Regarding the feasibility of this program, we can say with certainty that there is no problem. But why do so many people try, but end up with failure? The reporter asked several paper mills that basically did not use recycled disposable chopsticks to make pulp. When it comes to the reasons, several papers have talked about their respective difficulties.
The first is the turnover of old chopsticks. If the recycled chopsticks cannot be quickly turned around and used for production, they will quickly proliferate bacteria, spread germs, and even form pests. The consequences are unimaginable. In order to quickly circulate chopsticks, there must be enough sources. Although China produces tens of billions of pairs of disposable chopsticks every year, it is based on the statistics of China’s population base, and a large part of it is exported to other countries. The consumption in small areas is not enough to form batch processing. Scale; the chopsticks in a large area are concentrated in a unified treatment in a short period of time, and the logistics cost is too high. This is also the main obstacle to the recycling of used disposable chopsticks.
In addition, disposable chopsticks are stained with oil or even infectious bacteria, and the washing of chopsticks becomes a big problem. Cleaning these chopsticks to a certain extent does not mean that recycling chopsticks is the end of the work of creating raw materials for papermaking. The treatment of washing water is the highlight. Most of the cheap detergents contain phosphorus, and other chemical components that are rejected by water. If they are not treated properly, they can be directly discharged into rivers or infiltrated into the soil, causing pollution of water or soil. It is easy to cause secondary pollution. The meaning of chopsticks recycling is not worth the loss. Choosing an advanced sewage treatment system for washing sewage treatment will cost more than double, and the recycler will have no profit. This is the main reason why many people try and fail.
Most of the restaurant’s disposable chopsticks are poured into the bucket with the food. The drunken people are going back to feed the pigs, but the disposable chopsticks in the bucket can only be picked and thrown away, because they are all wet, and Can not be burned as firewood, there is no raw material for the next home. Therefore, disposable chopsticks are not recycled in the present, and become a true “once”.
