Not Made in China
It seems that everything we use these days from the clothes we wear to the toys our children play with is made in China.
So you would not be mistaken in assuming that the chopstick – an omnipresent feature of Chinese (and Asian cuisine) is made in China. Think again. The chopstick is Made in the USA. In a place called Americus, Georgia. The tiny Southern city, with a population of less than 20,000 people manufactures 10 million chopsticks a week for export to China, Japan and South Korea. It is difficult for the chopsticks to be made where they are used because of a lack of raw materials but Americus is home to the poplar and sweet gum trees, which provide the wood used to make chopsticks. Apparently, the environmental costs are next to nothing, because, according to Georgia Chopsticks – the company which makes the chopsticks – raw material comes from scraps from lumber and paper mills in the area, so no new trees are chopped down to create the chopsticks that are made in America.
