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Today’s (Saturday, August 11 2007) Straits Times, WORLD section page 40, under the Slice of Life section:

Beijing announced the end of use of disposable chopsticks in China as part of the campaign for a 2008 “green” Olympics.
“Restaurants should (permanently) abandon the use of disposable chopsticks for the good of their health and environment,” the China Daily paraphrased China Cuisine Association secretary-general Bian Jiang as saying.

In other words, it will not be a temporary gimmick for the Olympics, it’s for real!

Quoting from New Internationalist:

China is severely short of trees only – 13.9 per cent of its 9.6 million square kilometres is covered by forest. Its amount of forest land per capita is ranked 121st in the world. Now 12 of the 40 state-owned logging companies have nothing left to fell. ‘The remaining 80 million hectares of natural forests will disappear in a decade if this felling continues,’ says Professor Shen Guofang, of Beijing Forestry University.

Thank goodness, finally a big country like China realised the danger of deforestation and the importance to cease unnecessary abuse of natural resources. I only wish Singapore will take up such measure to help the environment soon. We need to be as earnest as we can be in protecting the environment. Using disposable chopsticks is less about personal hygienic issue, and more about a global crisis now.

I have started to bring my own stainless steel chopsticks, fork and spoon along with me for use when food stalls or restaurants provide only disposable ones. You could also make a difference too – do consider it.