A Chopstick Tree Grows in Brooklyn--Err, Beijing

Flickr user Dan4th

​Now that I think of it, Little Saigon restaurants are much better at offering plastic, reusable chopsticks than local Korean and Chinese eateries. I've never noticed a quantitative difference between those and fresh chopsticks--if anything, the reusable ones never kept stray splinters. And now that I think of it, new chopsticks are almost inevitably of wood, which means we're cutting down trees, which means deforestation, which means economic devastation--which means Greenpeace is all over it in China.

Ad Age has the scoop and pictures of trees constructed from 23 billion wooden chopsticks put outside a Beijing shopping mall, a minor miracle in itself considering the notoriously censorious Chinese government. The campaign is going well, by all accounts, and will travel around the city for the next couple of months.

Then again, plastic is much better at destroying the environment than chopping down trees--and if you don't believe me, read "Moby-Duck," one of the most terrifying--and brilliant--journalism stories ever published in American letters.