people throw out 100 000 chopsticks every day here in vancouver but now this local company is upcycling them into shelves cutting boards and furniture can it help reduce the massive amount of single-use items in restaurants around the world we visited chop values headquarters in canada to find out chop value drivers pick up used chopsticks from over 300 restaurants around vancouver a couple times a week typically about 100 kilograms a day up to 150 pre-covered it was more closer to like 300 kilograms a day the restaurants part with them for free after they got in uh i believe all 5000 pairs being recycled and reused so it's a great thing the real work begins at chop value hq the founder felix bach calls this place a micro factory just like a micro brewery curious visitors can come in and see how small batches of tiles get made and this is how the process looks like from raw material to end product first they sort the chopsticks on the custom-built shaker table these neat stacks are easier to work with [Music] then they dip the sticks into a water-based resin that provides a protective coating before they roast in a massive oven for five hours the 200 degree heat kills all the germs it smells like a bakery they need to get separated again so they can be spread out evenly for the next step you can take your frustration out on the day inside here they're weighed precisely this batch will make chop values thinnest tile so about 560 grams then comes the big squeeze a hydraulic machine also invented by box team compresses the chopsticks with hundreds of pounds of pressure the heart of the process that densifies like a cake a mat of chopsticks into a new uniform engineered material which is the base modular tile used for all of our end products the tiles can be sanded and assembled into furniture and also cut into smaller products like coasters or even domino pieces this desk sells for just under a thousand us dollars that's about three times what you'd pay at ikea but comparable to the price of a desk made from solid wood this piece is made from about 10 000 chopsticks chop value also takes custom orders we could do large countertops or boardroom tables or pretty much anything like that since 2016 the company has upcycled 33 million chopsticks that otherwise would have ended up in a landfill but in china people use that many wood utensils in one lunch break there people throw out 130 million pairs every single day that means leveling entire forests for a product most people use for just one meal it's not just asia consumers around the world contribute to this problem we all have this drawer filled with plastic cutlery chopsticks condiments that we never asked for inexpensive they're cheap they just come in without you even asking for them sheila moravati is the woman behind the cut out cutlery campaign her organization pressured major delivery apps to opt out of sending cutlery by default she estimates that saved well over 200 million utensils from going to landfill good job sheila activists in china tried a similar strategy in 2017 they sued their country's biggest food delivery apps trying to force them to stop giving cutlery by default there was a public outcry at the time but since the pandemic food delivery with single-use items is higher than ever so we may never eliminate disposables completely that's why sheila says upcycling is so important if there are opportunities like that to to use something that was going in the trash or headed to landfill why not we have so much trash right now and it's just we're at the limit the planet can't take it anymore when shop value first started it was only making coasters now it has franchises in three cities in north america with more expected later this year coasters are still the number one selling item but the collection has grown to more than 30 products and felix bach hopes his invention will show people that the next big idea for reducing waste could be right at our fingertips you put a few tiles and a few hexagon shelves on your wall and you can point to your friends to your wall and say hey guess what i have 1800 chopsticks on my wall and you start a conversation about sustainability or about recycling you
