Shenzhen's Luohu District is working out supportive policies for small eateries in the district that stop using disposable chopsticks.

Recently, the district people's congress became the first to pass a proposal that advocates a ban on disposable chopsticks, meal boxes and plastics bags.

"Using disposable chopsticks means destroying a piece of forest," said the proposal.

In its next move, the district government will issue supportive documents to help the eateries to overcome any difficulties that occurred during the process, said Liu Xueqiang, director of the Standing Committee of the District People's Congress.

Shenzhen should have a long-term plan for setting up its new outlook on energy consumption, he said.

In Shenzhen, many small restaurants and eateries use disposable chopsticks. One Guilin rice noodle shop uses about 10,000 pairs of chopsticks each month, according to a report in the Shenzhen Evening News.

There are tens of thousands of such eateries in Shenzhen, which use most of the disposable chopsticks in the city.

Statistics show that China consumes 45 billion pairs of chopsticks, which is equivalent to 25 million trees, a year.

The proposal has received both favorable and unfavorable responses from the catering sector.

"We prefer using disposable chopsticks," said Zhang Fan, deputy manager of Miandianwang, a leading food chain store offering northern Chinese delicacies.

She said all the 44 chain stores in the city offered disposable chopsticks. If you use re-usable chopsticks, the patrons will wonder whether the chopsticks have really been sterilized.

But another manager, Li Jiaqin, of a Sichuan-flavored restaurant in Futian District said that it preferred using re-usable chopsticks.

He denied that using re-usable chopsticks would raise costs for the restaurant, even though they would need to buy disinfection facilities.

(China Daily April 13, 2006)