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THE BASEBALL DIAMOND — Spring is in full swing, and that means it’s time to head to the ballpark to watch baseball.
There’s nothing like the sound of a wooden bat smacking a ball for a hit. But like any other sporting equipment, bats don’t have a long shelf life. Most bats get a few hits out of them and then they’re sent to be recycled, and of course, bats are broken all the time.
In Japan, where baseball’s popularity is arguably bigger than it is here in the U.S., one man is helping turn broken bats into something many people use every day: chopsticks.
In this video, Hyogoo Uratani, CEO of Japanese manufacturing company Hyozaemon, explains how his company is trying to save trees while producing a new product from recycled bats.
The video’s narrator explains how bats made from aodamo trees were popular. Due to said popularity and forestry mismanagement, the tree species was becoming depleted.
Uratani read about this aodamo tree dilemma and wanted to do something about it. His idea: Let’s make some chopsticks from broken bats.
“I thought, ‘The leftover materials when manufacturing bats — we can use them to make our chopsticks,” Uratani said.
Teams from around Japan send their broken bats made of aodamo wood to Uratani’s company, where workers take the bats and turn them into chopsticks.
Uratani said his factory can turn one broken bat into four or five pairs of chopsticks — and those chopsticks look like mini bats! Sweet!
With profits from the sales of his company’s baseball chopsticks, Uratani and other baseball leagues and teams have donated to a group planting a new forest of aodamo trees. Uratani said aodamo trees have become a precious resource and he feels it’s important to keep the tree from the risk of extinction.
“The environment shouldn’t be polluted, as we are kept alive by it. I feel strongly that we are all kept alive by the universe and the earth,” he said.
Here’s to you, Mr. Uratani, and to all of those working hard to save aodamo trees. Thanks for your creative thinking — and for some awesome-looking baseball bat chopsticks!
