ENVIRONMENT-JAPAN: A Cut Off For Free Chopsticks?

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Oct 13 2006 (IPS) - China’s decision to raise prices on its exports of wooden chopsticks is proving something of a problem for Japanese restaurants and the like, that have long offered them to customers for free.

Chinese chopsticks are now about 30 percent more expensive than they were four months ago – and there are also plans for another price increase, on the back of concerns about deforestation and rising production costs.

However, environmentalists hope the move will prompt an overhaul of forest management in Japan – while safeguarding forests elsewhere in Asia.

“Forests in China and in Russia that provide cheap wood for chopsticks for the Japanese market need urgent protection. It is high time Japan relied on its own forests for its chopsticks,” said Junichi Mishiba of the Japanese chapter of Friends of the Earth, a non-governmental organisation.

At present, about 500 million pairs of chopsticks are manufactured in Japan, a fraction of the 24.8 billion pairs – or “waribashi”, as they are called here – used each year. China provides almost 98 percent of Japan’s chopsticks, something officials ascribe to the high cost of Japanese timber.

“Timber produced in Japan is exorbitant compared to China. We are now putting our efforts (into) producing more reasonably priced wood in Japan where our forests are healthy and overgrown,” said Yoshimi Nakamoto, an official at the Forestry Agency.

He noted that government was also aiming to increase local chopstick production and sell more Japanese-manufactured waribashi through its new ‘Awareness Movement’ programme, launched this month.

Chopstick production in Japan is currently one sixth of what it was a decade ago. About 20 percent of Japanese forests, which consist largely of cedar and pine, are being utilised at present, mostly to produce timber for furniture.

In a landmark step Mini Mart, a chain of convenience stores, has begun asking customers to pay four U.S. cents for a pair of Japanese-made waribashi – the first company to do so in the highly competitive food trade. Activists estimate that a pair of Chinese-made chopsticks costs less than one U.S. cent.

“Charging for disposable chopsticks is not easy in the convenience store world where convenience and cheap prices are our lifeline,” said Kimikazu Sugawara, spokesperson for Mini Mart.

“In cooperation with the government, we have been explaining to customers that by paying for their waribashi, they are contributing to saving Japanese forests. The results have not been too adverse.”

Still, Sugawara acknowledged that the going on this issue was not easy; and, franchises in the chain are not obliged to sell chopsticks.

“The customers are given the choice of choosing free Chinese-made waribashi or paying for Japanese ones. On a good day we have about 20 people paying five Yen (four U.S. cents) for a pair at a store, which is less than five percent of the total number of customers,” he explained.

Tellingly, other convenience stores have not followed suit.

Ichiro Fukuoka, spokesperson for the Japan Chopstick Association and himself an importer of waribashi, says Japan should continue to look for cheap imports, such as chopsticks from Vietnam. “There is no crisis as yet,” he insisted.

The Japanese are also described as being averse to using chopsticks that others have eaten with, unlike in South Korea, for instance, where steel chopsticks are often offered in restaurants rather than disposable ones.

“I used to pull out my plastic or bamboo chopsticks when going out for dinner and was looked upon by others as being strange, because people had simply taken it for granted that free chopsticks is the norm,” recalled Mariko Sano, spokesperson for Green Consumer Network, a grass-roots organisation.

Indeed, the practice of offering customers waribashi – some, in upscale restaurants, wrapped in intricately decorated paper envelopes that reflect the changing seasons – has become a deep-rooted custom that will be hard to erase.

Nonetheless, Sano said more people are now aware of the effect of disposable chopsticks on forests, and the importance of forests in controlling global warming – and that Japan should take advantage of this by enacting laws that force businesses to stop providing waribashi for free. Activists complain that the practice of giving out free chopsticks encourages wastefulness and poor environmental awareness among customers.

Mishiba also believes that with government working towards better management of local forests, the drive to reduce chopstick imports will get stronger.