Fancy a desk, shelf or cheese board made of chopsticks? Here’s how Evelyn Hew is championing a circular environment by tapping onto one of Singapore’s biggest waste offenders
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Did you know that an estimated 500,000 disposable chopsticks are discarded in Singapore every day?
That number grows to a staggering 1.5 billion on a global scale, according to ChopValue, a sustainable home decor company.
“Not to mention that 40 per cent of it is carbon, so when you send it to the incineration plant, you immediately add to climate destruction,” says Evelyn Hew, the managing director of ChopValue Singapore. “Basically, each chopstick is about three grams which means that if we incinerate the estimated 500,000 per day, we release 600 kg of carbon into the atmosphere daily. For reference, a mature tree sequesters 21 kg of carbon per year, so we are essentially cancelling out the work of 28 trees daily.”
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While this is a significant issue, Hew is determined to make a dent, however small, in the industry and to create a circular economy with her company, which takes disposable chopsticks and turns them into furniture, accessories and games.
The company, which was originally founded by Felix Böck in 2016 in Vancouver, is the world’s first circular economy brand that designs and manufactures products completely from recycled chopsticks. In 2021, Hew brought the business into Singapore after learning about how bad the waste situation was here. Here’s how she did it.
“My interest in sustainability began in 2015 when I founded a sustainability consultancy called Smartcity Solutions, which uses tech to provide solutions to the waste management industry,” explained Hew.
“It was here that I saw first-hand the waste problem as I dealt with it day in and day out. My husband and I, who worked on the consultancy together, started learning more about the environmental challenges that mankind has created, from pollution to waste,” she continued. She added that as a mum of three herself, she was also concerned about her kids growing up in a place where the environment was steadily degrading.