00:02people throw out 100,000 chopsticks every day here in Vancouver but now this local company
00:11is upcycling them into shelves cutting boards and furniture can it help reduce the massive
00:19amount of single-use items in restaurants around the world we visited chop values
00:25headquarters in Canada to find out chop value drivers pick up used chopsticks from over 300
00:35restaurants around Vancouver a couple times a week typically about 100 kilograms a day up to 150
00:43pre-covid it was more closer to like 300 kilograms a day the restaurants part with them for free after
00:52they got in I believe all 5,000 pairs being recycled and reused so it's a great thing the real
01:03work
01:03begins at chop value HQ the founder Felix Bach calls this place a micro factory just like a micro
01:11brewery curious visitors can come in and see how small batches of tiles get made and this is how
01:19the process looks like from raw material to end product first they sort the chopsticks on the
01:26custom-built shaker table these neat stacks are easier to work with then they dip the sticks into
01:35a water-based resin that provides a protective coating before they roast in a massive oven for
01:42five hours the 200 degree heat kills all the germs smells like a bakery they need to get separated again
01:52so
01:52they can be spread out evenly for the next step you can take your frustration out on the day inside
01:59here
02:01they're weighed precisely this batch will make chop values thinnest tile so about 560 grams then comes
02:12the big squeeze a hydraulic machine also invented by Bach's team compresses the chopsticks with hundreds
02:19of pounds of pressure the heart of the process that densifies like a cake a mat of chopsticks into a
02:28new
02:28uniform engineered material which is the base modular tile used for all of our end products the tiles can
02:37be sanded and assembled into furniture and also cut into smaller products like coasters or even domino
02:43pieces this desk sells for just under a thousand US dollars that's about three times what you'd pay at
02:51Ikea but comparable to the price of a desk made from solid wood this piece is made from about ten
02:58thousand
02:58chopsticks chop value also takes custom orders we could do large countertops or boardroom tables or pretty much
03:08anything like that since 2016 the company has upcycled 33 million chopsticks that otherwise would have ended up in a
03:18landfill
03:20but in China people use that many wood utensils in one lunch break there people throw out a hundred
03:27thirty million pairs every single day that means leveling entire forests for a product most people use for
03:36just one meal it's not just Asia consumers around the world contribute to this problem we all have this
03:44drawer filled with plastic cutlery chopsticks condiments that we never asked for inexpensive they're cheap
03:50they just come in without you even asking for them Sheila Moravati is the woman behind the cutout cutlery
03:56campaign her organization pressured major delivery apps to opt out of sending cutlery by default she
04:04estimates that saved well over 200 million utensils from going to landfill good job Sheila activists in China
04:12tried a similar strategy in 2017 they sued their country's biggest food delivery apps trying to
04:19force them to stop giving cutlery by default there was a public outcry at the time but since the pandemic
04:25food delivery with single-use items is higher than ever so we may never eliminate disposables
04:32completely that's why Sheila says upcycling is so important if there are opportunities like that to
04:40to use something that was going in the trash or headed to landfill why not we have so much trash
04:46right
04:46now and it's just we're at the limit that the planet can't take it anymore when chop value first started
04:55it was only making coasters now it has franchises in three cities in North America with more expected
05:02later this year coasters are still the number one selling item but the collection has grown to more
05:08than 30 products and Felix Bach hopes his invention will show people that the next big idea for reducing
05:16waste could be right at our fingertips you put a few tiles and a few hexagon shelves on your wall
05:23and
05:24you can point to your friends to your wall and say hey guess what I have 1,800 chopsticks on
05:29my wall and
05:30you start a conversation about sustainability or about recycling
