Paper straws need to take a seat and make way for these all new environmentally friendly shaved wood straws that can be made at home!

Aqura Home Co. Ltd is an environmentally friendly company that specialises in custom built wooden housing. Currently the company is looking for new ethical partners amongst the residents of Japan that they can work with to ensure their ultimate aim of a bright future for The Earth.

As a company that handles trees, and with a cumulative total of more than 14,000, Aqura Home has put great efforts into activities to utilize and protect trees.
Following a brief pause due to the global catastrophe of COVID-19, Aqura Home is now ready to resume environmental contribution activities and believe that to have a big impact it is best to start small.

The company believes that a great amount of damage in western Japan caused by torrential rains in 2018 was partially due to the thinning of trees in the area.
The idea of creating ‘wooden straws’ was thought up by environmental journalist Yuri Takeda after she covered the areas devastated by the rain. Working together, Aqura Home and Yuri Takeda successfully created the straws by curling thinly shaved wood using an ancient technique known as ‘kannagake’.
Not only do the wooden straws contribute to forest conservation but they also create one solution to the increasing amounts of plastic waste that have become a global issue.

To gain global attention, the wooden straws were introduced at the G20 meeting held in Osaka in 2019 and quickly attracted interest in both Japan and other countries. As part of promotion, the company came up with the ‘10 Million Wooden Straw Project’.
The original plan for the project was that 10 million wooden straws would be produced and distributed to the expected increased number of international travellers visiting Japan during 2020, however due to COVID-19 and the reduction in travel across the globe the project was put on hold.
The project is introduced on the company website; “We aim to solicit the help of everyone to produce and distribute 10 million wood straws in the year 2020 when people from all over the world gather in Japan. By spreading this project to people all over Japan and around the world, we hope that as many people as possible will turn their attention to the current state of the global environment and raise their awareness of environmental conservation.”

Following the damage caused to Kyushu by heavy rain in July this year, the company has once again recognised the need for better forest management and that even with global disasters such as COVID-19, the threats to Japan’s forests are still very much real and are in need of dire attention.
In response, the ‘10 Million Wooden Straw Project’ is resuming with production kits so that you can get involved at home.

Each production kit comes with a handful of thinly shaved wooden pieces and some sharpening tools that can be used by anyone. The company hopes that anyone who gets involved with the project will be willing to hold wooden straw-making workshops from home, sell the specific wood needed to other like minded people who are looking to make a difference in the world and to promote sustainability and environmentally friendly ideas and methods.

Keep up to date with Aqura Home, their environmental friendly developments and the 10 million wooden straw project on the official wooden straw website.