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A Baseball Bat Dies, and Chopsticks Are Born
The Japanese, meticulous in their approach to baseball, recycling and reuse, have figured out how to make good use of splintered bats.


Broken baseball bats used to be burned in Japan. Now they become chopsticks.CreditCreditShiho Fukada for The New York Times

By Jeré Longman
Oct. 25, 2018

TOKYO — The bats the Red Sox and the Dodgers break during the World Series are likely to be sold at team stores or by memorabilia companies, donated to charity, given away or even repurposed as wooden handles for bottle openers.

In Japan’s version of the World Series, which begins Saturday in a country meticulous about recycling, cracked and splintered bats may find another use as objects indispensable to life here: chopsticks.

Each season, thousands of damaged bats are reprocessed into reusable “kattobashi,” a mash-up of the Japanese word for chopsticks and a baseball chant that translates as “get a big hit.”

The recycling is part of a conservation effort, designed to be decades long and to help preserve and replenish a species of ash tree known as aodamo, native to Japan and a region of eastern Russia.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/sports/baseball/chopsticks.html?