China should promote a resource conservation-minded consumption concept, and ban the production and sale of disposable small wooden products, a national lawmaker said during the annual session of the country's top legislature.

The daily use of disposable chopsticks, wooden toothpicks and matchsticks, and other small wooden products causes "startling" waste of forest resource in the country with a population of 1.3 billion, and the government should issue a ban, said Jiang Shaohua, a deputy to the 10th National People's Congress (NPC).

About 45 billion pairs of disposable wooden chopsticks are used in China every year, whose forest coverage is less than 17 percent, Jiang said.

Such a huge consumption means the use of 1.66 million cubic meters of wood, or the felling of 25 million trees, which can cover an area of 2 million square meters, the NPC deputy from the western municipality of Chongqing said.

The use of disposable wooden products, which is based on destruction of environment and waste of natural resources, is a "costly" way of consumption, Jiang said.

Jiang said Japan sets a model in forest resource conservation, which mainly uses construction and furniture leftovers to make disposable chopsticks and has an effective mechanism of recycling.

Jiang is attending the ongoing session of the Fourth Session of the 10th National People's Congress which opened in Beijing on Sunday.
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(Xinhua News Agency March 8, 2006)