Your used chopsticks could be someone else’s furniture
Meet Evelyn Hew, the Singaporean who is giving your greasy disposable chopsticks a second life by upcycling them into beautiful furniture.
The team behind her company, ChopValue Singapore, meets twice a week to collect hundreds of thousands of used chopsticks from restaurants and hospitals around Singapore. Currently, Hew and her team have salvaged and upcycled 1.2 million pairs of chopsticks from people’s dinner plates. These waste products are repurposed with zero toxins, less water, and less carbon emission.
The idea came to her while she was searching for solutions that would tackle waste and contamination problems for her first start-up, SmartCity Solutions. She came across ChopValue Canada on Facebook and realised that its model of upcycling used chopsticks can be applied in Asia, where disposable chopsticks are part of the daily necessities.
ChopValue Singapore currently has five products on their website and will be expanding its range of products to include smaller items such as handphones and iPad stands. Each piece of furniture is a combination of the memories of diners, Singapore’s dabao culture and its sustainability journey.
Moving forward, Hew hopes to expand her collection drive by enlisting the help of government agencies and the community, as well as inspiring businesses to think about how they can upcycle waste materials.
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