Social Contributions

Recycling Disposable Chopsticks

Basic Policy on Recycling Disposable Chopsticks

Basic Policy on Recycling Disposable Chopsticks

Basic Policy

The Oji Group collects and recycles used disposable chopsticks with the spirit of attaching importance to environmental protection and valuing resources; that is, improving the environment of daily life through cooperation between residents, businesses, government, and schools.

Why Recycling Disposable Chopsticks is Meaningful

Used disposable chopsticks are recycled into papermaking material.

Where Used Disposable Chopsticks Go

  • While we produce a range of paper products at our mills, we use used disposable chopsticks for products that are used daily, such as copying paper, wood-free paper, printing paper, posters, and tissues.
  • Used disposable chopsticks are used as a papermaking material at paper mills. These chopsticks are not the only material of paper. If they are used as the only material, however, used disposable chopsticks permit the production of the following quantity of paper products.

10 kg of chopsticks (approx. 2,500 pairs) → 15 boxes of tissues
3 pairs of chopsticks (6 chopsticks) → One postcard or one sheet of A4-sized copying paper

  • *We donate 1,000 yen per ton of used disposable chopsticks to the Japan Council on the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD-J).

Mechanism of disposable chopstick recycling

Cherishing the Spirit of MOTTAINAI
-- Used Disposable Chopsticks are Utilized Effectively as a Papermaking Material.

While disposable chopsticks are made of low-quality lumber, such as thinned wood, paper is also made from low-quality lumber, sawmill residue, and recovered paper. This means that used disposable chopsticks also serve as a papermaking material.

Both disposable chopsticks and paper are made from timber. However, while chopsticks are made by cutting lumber, paper is made from pulp, which is extracted by boiling lumber in a tank.