Lawmaker warns China demand for chopsticks killing trees: media

“We must change our consumption habits and encourage people to carry their own tableware,” Bo Guangxin, the chairman of Jilin Forestry Industry Group, was quoted as telling fellow delegates at the country's annual parliament session on Friday.

China's chopstick production amounted to 20 million 20-year-old trees, enough to fill Tiananmen Square with 360 layers of the single-use utensil, the Xinhua state news agency cited him as saying.

Representatives to the rubber-stamp National People's Congress meet each year largely to approve decisions already made by the country's communist leaders.

China is the world's largest consumer and importer of wood, and imposed a 5-percent tax on disposable chopsticks and wooden floor panels in 2006 in an effort to reduce timber wastage.

The country's demand for foreign wood had tripled since 2000 to reach 180 million cubic meters in 2011, the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency said in a report last year.

The campaign group said the growing appetite for timber — with at least one-tenth of supplies coming from illegal sources — meant that “the fate of much of the world's natural forests is in China's hands.”

SHARE CLOSE
Blogger		Google+
Live Journal		Plurk
Stumble Upon

Tweet

	PREVIOUS ARTICLE
	Hard-line communist to head China political advisory body

NEXT ARTICLE
China bank chief gets top post, way clear to stay on

Write a Comment

Terms

Enter your comments - 3000 characters max

Type in image code

 Receive China Post promos
 Respond to this email

Submit