Shaanxi is the first province in China to ban one-off wood chopsticks, which consume a large amount of wood, Xinhua news agency reported.

Advertisements promoting the use of environment-friendly chopsticks and related disinfection facilities can be seen everywhere in Xi'an, the provincial capital, following the ban.

The use of chopsticks for eating started more than 3,500 years ago in China, but one-off chopsticks made their appearance only 20 years ago.

More than one million pairs of one-off wooden chopsticks are used daily at nearly 10,000 restaurants in Xi'an, and most of them are not recycled for other purposes. A pair of one-off chopsticks costs only one-tenth the price of chopsticks that are used repeatedly.

Statistics show that a total of 25 million trees are cut in China to make 45 billion pairs of one-off chopsticks every year.

The province has worked out a plan to control soil erosion in 100,000 square kilometers of land and return over one million hectares of reclaimed land to forest and pastures within 12 years.

(eastday.com 06/06/2001)