E36 - Scott Anderson from Chop Value Toronto East - repurposing chopsticks

The UpCycle Canada Podcast: Your Eco-Friendly Inspiration

EPISODE 36 -
in this episode, we speak with Scott Anderson from Chop Value - Toronto East! Chop Value collects used chopsticks from area restaurants and repurposes these "disposable" items and recreates amazing creations in the process!
Chop Value is a urban harvest used chopsticks. Our resource is what others may view as waste - that means we don’t take virgin materials from our environment. Every chopstick is perfect, slender, and defect-free, making them ideal to develop an innovative engineered material. When designing products, our mindset has been circularity and longevity. This allows us to minimize our environmental impact while creating sustainable solutions engineered to last.
We intend to make a difference

We are completely transparent with our efforts to leave a climate positive
footprint throughout our entire process.

Our hope is to help you make more conscious decisions by sharing how we
source our materials, how we process them, and what you can do with your
products' end of life. Join us in making the circular economy the new norm.
Founder's note: Why I dream about chopsticks. Not too long ago, I tried to apply my wood engineering and stereotypical “German efficiency thinking” (not my quote) to
tackle the wood and construction waste in Vancouver, Canada. A seminar that presented the research results and potential industry know-how for value-added materials, unfortunately,
did not resonate much with industry leaders. It was frustrating, but at the same time eye-opening.

I realized that in order to prove sustainable business concepts that rely on under-utilized resource supply, there must be thought leaders who show its viability. It had to be interesting, something easy to comprehend, and something that elicits emotions towards the problem of linear economy and our vast amount of waste. I would need to develop a process that creates innovative, highly value-added, and appealing products from a relatable resource.

And that is how Chop Value was born.

Fast forward 10 million chopsticks - we have presented our Microfactory concept in more than 10 countries, with media covered in more than 35. For me, we’ve moved beyond proving that we have built a viable, carbon-negative manufacturing business out of discarded chopsticks, and now it's time to expand this concept globally.

Our story resonates with people. We believe that we have the responsibility to educate, inspire, and set an example that resource efficiency thinking should simply be the norm.

- Felix Böck
Chop Value - Toronto East
Chop Value - main site
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For more about our business please visit
https://upcyclecanada.ca/
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