Chopsticks as underwear?

Don't look for this one in your local department store anytime soon, but a Japanese company is promoting a fashionable way to promote environmentalism and save forests, which are cut to make the roughly 25 billiion sets of wood and bamboo disposable chopsticks the citizens there use: a chopstick bra.

Lingerie maker Triumph International Japan unveiled its new bra in which the cups holster a pair of collapsible chopsticks, which are pulled out before a meal, according to the London Sunday Independent.

"It's a small step, but because many Japanese chopsticks are disposable, big chunks of forests are being cut down," a spokesman told the Independent.

Most of Japan's disposable chopsticks come from China, which the Independent said cuts down 25 million trees each year to make the pull-apart splints. They are popular in Japan because they are both cheap and hygienic. A 5 percent tax China placed last year on the 45 billion pairs of so-called waribashi it produces yearly has Japanese restaurants searching for alternatives now.

The story admits the bras are not actually for sale and probably would struggle to find buyers. Each of the bra's cups was a bowl--one for rice and the other for the popular miso soup. The reusable chopsticks rest in the "cleavage," the story said.

COPYRIGHT 2008 American Forests
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