Sexiest Geeks Alive

This post was inspired by a new pair of chopsticks that I just found today: Papyrusticks! They’re chopsticks made from recycled paper.

For years I carried my own pair of chopsticks. I stored them in a little case which I tossed into in my purse/bag/coat pocket. After a while, I had a couple of sets - I needed a shorter pair to fit into smaller purses and jacket pockets (women’s coats rarely have the inside breast pocket!) and found that a children’s set from Japan was the ideal length, with the added bonus of being cute and colorful. Now, collapsible pairs are also available and I’m eager to pick some up. At some point I managed to lose them all and only recently remembered to start again.

Why bother carrying around sticks? It’s not just because I enjoyed all the weird looks or that I was desperate for a conversation starter. And I am a far cry from being a germphobe who can’t trust “public sticks.” It’s because about 45 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks are manufactured in China annually, approximately the equivalent of 25 million trees a year. Yes, they’re made of bamboo, but even that tree doesn’t grow back instantaneously.

Still, the facts didn’t really hit home until an artist friend of mine, Donna Keiko Ozawa, did a project working with discarded disposable chopsticks. In Tokyo in 1999, she collected the sticks from 11 restaurants over 12 days and gathered 15,000 chopsticks. In 2005, she did it again in San Francisco and in 8 weeks from only 12 restaurants, collected 180,000 chopsticks! Think about that for a minute, and think about how many restaurants we have in SF. Here’s a video about the Warabashi Project: [paragraph corrected - sorry for the mistakes, Donna!]

I found the Papyrusticks at Andronico’s in San Francisco but don’t know where else to pick them up. Goggle searching the name yielded no sites in English, but led me down a path where I found another sexy addition to this post: a promotional bra with special chopstick pocket - and bowls for cups! It was designed to help publicize efforts to get people to carry sticks with them. It’s totally funny and definitely gets your attention!

My search also led to a cool idea written up in one of my new favorite sites, Inventor Spot: the Japanese government plans to turn chopsticks into biofuel. They have 90,000 tons of wasted wood in disposable chopsticks per year that currently just goes into the dump.

BYOS (Bring Your Own Sticks) is a hip new trend, apparently. Just think how fashion forward you’ll feel pulling out your own interchangeable stainless steel set, rugged mountain-ready sticks or a cute children’s pair. Chopsticks are not just for East Asian food, either. I particularly love eating salads with sticks but basically am prone to use them any time I would otherwise have to use a disposable plastic fork. Remember, if you’re in need of a good conversation starter, opening a case with your own sticks does start good conversations!