China should promote a resource conservation-minded consumption
concept, and ban the production and sale of disposable small wooden
products, a national lawmaker said during the annual session of the
country's top legislature.
The daily use of disposable chopsticks, wooden toothpicks and
matchsticks, and other small wooden products causes "startling"
waste of forest resource in the country with a population of 1.3
billion, and the government should issue a ban, said Jiang Shaohua,
a deputy to the 10th National People's Congress (NPC).
About 45 billion pairs of disposable wooden chopsticks are used
in China every year, whose forest coverage is less than 17 percent,
Jiang said.
Such a huge consumption means the use of 1.66 million cubic
meters of wood, or the felling of 25 million trees, which can cover
an area of 2 million square meters, the NPC deputy from the western
municipality of
Chongqing said.
The use of disposable wooden products, which is based on
destruction of environment and waste of natural resources, is a
"costly" way of consumption, Jiang said.
Jiang said Japan sets a model in forest resource conservation,
which mainly uses construction and furniture leftovers to make
disposable chopsticks and has an effective mechanism of
recycling.
Jiang is attending the ongoing session of the Fourth Session of
the 10th National People's Congress which opened in Beijing on
Sunday.
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(Xinhua News Agency March 8, 2006)