Spotlight On ChopValue

Hailing from a small village in southern Germany, Felix was headed for a career in carpentry after leaving school at 15 to study the trade. Along the way he became the best Red Seal carpenter in south Germany, earned his degree in wood engineering and worked in Ethiopia as head of product development for a startup creating bamboo-based alternatives to wooden building materials.  Then in 2014, the University of British Columbia recruited Felix to do a PhD as part of a research collaboration on structural bamboo. Here Felix learned that each year in Vancouver as much as 600,000 tonnes of wood that could be reused for construction end up in the landfill, he knew he had to do something.

Following a sushi date with an accepted challenge and an estimation that 100,000 chopsticks are thrown out every day in Vancouver, the idea for ChopValue was born. The company collects used bamboo chopsticks from local restaurants and transforms them into beautiful products. ChopValue’s team of builders, makers, designers, programmers, influencers, engineers and scientists have built a viable, carbon negative manufacturing business from 7,000,000+ chopsticks……and counting.

View the full interview. ChopValue