Owner Brooks Smith, left, and Nico Fenske, general manager, pose in the lobby at ChopValue Las Vegas Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2023. The company recycles used chopsticks from restaurants and turns them into a variety of products.
Monday, Sept. 4, 2023 | 2 a.m.
Trays filled with hundreds of used chopsticks sway from side to side, the wooden utensils rhythmically clacking together as a special machine separates them from stray bits of food and sorts them into neat piles.
A year ago, these chopsticks would have ended up at the landfill. Today, they enter ChopValue’s Las Vegas workshop and leave as drink coasters, custom countertops and high-end furniture.
Brooks Smith, owner of the franchise’s Las Vegas location, said the small factory has collected about 25 tons of wooden chopsticks since opening in August 2022.
“These chopsticks pile up like crazy,” Smith said. “We can’t stop the chopsticks from coming in; we have to keep on processing. Once the train starts, it doesn’t stop.”
Each week, the company’s truck makes the rounds to more than 100 restaurants, collecting chopsticks from ChopValue-branded bins. They are hauled back to the small manufacturing facility in a commercial complex south of the Las Vegas airport.
After they are sorted, the chopsticks are loaded into metal mesh baskets, soaked in resin and cooked in an oven for about 11 hours. When they come out, they are hard, dry and smell a little bit like baked goods.
The sticks then get separated and layered into a press that forms them into tiles that make up all of ChopValue’s products.
A computer-controlled machine can carve custom designs and logos into the finished pieces, which range from $14 coaster sets made from 150 chopsticks to a $1,379 desk comprised of over 10,000 chopsticks.
Some designs make the chopsticks obvious, incorporating their shape into patterns in the finished piece. Other pieces look and feel like they are made from golden brown slabs of wood.
Custom tables and butcher blocks can use up to 33,000 chopsticks. The Las Vegas factory’s break room is furnished with a table made from some 66,000 chopsticks.
Items can be ordered directly from ChopValue’s website. Orders from western states are built and shipped from the Las Vegas location.
“California, Oregon, Washington — those are probably our biggest buyers and where a lot of the traffic is from,” Smith said. “Vegas is starting to catch on.”
Smith said the company wants to start more U.S. factories, because long-distance shipping counters its overall goal of lowering carbon emissions. “If everything is localized, it really offsets that,” Smith said.
ChopValue, founded in 2016 by Felix Böck in Vancouver, British Columbia, has a dozen microfactories around the globe, including two in the United States — the other one is in Boston.
Böck said he wanted to tackle the problem of wood and construction waste but realized he needed to focus on something that would be interesting and easy for people to comprehend.
“I would need to develop a process that creates innovative, highly value-added and appealing products from a relatable resource,” he said on the company’s website. “And that’s how ChopValue was born.”
Smith, whose father, Ron, and brother Christopher own 17 McDonald’s restaurants in Las Vegas, said he learned about ChopValue from a Business Insider article in 2021.
It took him a year to find the right factory location, buy and set up ChopValue’s proprietary equipment and coordinate with restaurants to take their used chopsticks.
One of the restaurants that donates chopsticks to the company is also one of its most enthusiastic customers.
Omakase Kyara Sake Bar’s bamboo chopsticks go directly to ChopValue’s shop, where all of their check presenters and serving boards come from.
“We like what they do; we believe in what they do,” said restaurant co-owner Winston Matsuuchi. “It’s a great idea.”
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