Aug

Japan: making biofuels out of used chopsticks

Posted by admin Published in Etc., Ethanol

I’ve gotta be honest here: I knew that chopsticks were popular in Japan, but I had no concept to what extent they are consumed. Really, really, quickly. Our friendly neighborhood sister site, Gadling, sent us a tip which includes that piece of trivia: The Japanese humans use 90,000 tons (81,646,000 kilograms) or about two-hundred pairs per person per year. From the exposition, I glean that after chopsticks are used a individual moment, they are discarded. So, what to do with all of these used chopsticks? Why not use them for biofuel? Since Japan is already in the habit of separating their burnable refuse and non-burnable refuse, they could pretty easily implement a system to gather the used chopsticks and turn them into

a fuel source. According to Gadling, “Private contractors will next transport these boxes to special facilities where the chopsticks will be ground up and compressed into wooden pellets, which can be used as a high-energy fuel.”

Wooden pellets are a opportunity, as well as a cellulosic biofuel, should any plants actually be built using that method of biofuel production. While it may seem to build increasingly sense to carry around reusable chopsticks, using them as fuel after being discarded is better than seeing them end up burned absent with nothing to show for it.

[Source: Gadling]

Original post by Jeremy Korzeniewski