In another in my continuing series of elemental considerations...who knew there was such a crunch on:

The Chinese government is introducing a 5% tax on disposable wooden chopsticks in a bid to preserve its forests. It produces about 45 billion pairs of chopsticks a year, consuming millions of trees and bamboo plants.

I am reading the very interesting academic text Beer in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance by a Mr. Unger right now. It is a study of the economic and social culture of beer and I'm going through the issue of raw materials needed for brewing. It appears that something like half the economy of the southern North Sea zone around 1450 was tied into the creation of beer as a sanitary supply of fluid. Wood was a big part of that - for both barrels to ship it in and the fuel to boil the stuff in its making. The development of hopped beer which stored well created the boom in barrels. Governments passed laws that said you could only export beer in barrels to the degree that you imported wood. How much wood does it take to make 45 billion pairs of chopsticks?