That pile of chopsticks in your kitchen drawer and the trash bags full of used chopsticks at any of the Asian restaurants in Dorchester would typically end up in the waste stream. But if Savin Hill’s Elaine Chow has anything to say about that situation, those utensils could become your next kitchen table.

Chow, her husband and their two children call Dorchester home, but these days she has been busier than ever at her Charlestown micro-factory converting recycled chopsticks into all kinds of wood products – custom coasters, architectural wall features, tables, and furniture, among other items.

With so many chopsticks being thrown into the trash, Chow said, she had a “gut feeling” there was opportunity in Boston for this kind of sustainable manufacturing.

“This is something you use for 20 minutes and then throw away,” she said, but “they’ll probably live on for 10 or more years as a table or furniture or something else… To know just in six months that we could divert six tons of chopsticks from landfills is significant and amazing. For me, it’s about Boston being at a turning point for sustainability. We need more ideas about what to do with our garbage…We can’t just keep generating garbage and doing nothing with it.”

Chow’s business is based on the franchise model ChopValue out of Vancouver, British Columbia, and her location is only the second one in the United States – the other being Las Vegas. ChopValue was founded by Felix Böck, who saw the feasibility of creating new material and a viable business model that relies 100 percent on a certain under-utilized wooden resource.

Chow had built a 20-year career at the non-profit Year Up, which focuses on workforce development for urban young people. However, getting into the executive levels took her far away from the front lines of the operation, and she wanted something more hands-on. Having picked up woodworking during the pandemic, and having a passion for sustainability and recycling, she discovered ChopValue where those two interests collided.

“I took the plunge and left my job in late September 2021,” she said, noting that the risk was real for her family. “I doubled down on my due diligence and by Thanksgiving, I had purchased the franchise. By fall, I secured all my funding. I thought I could be open by June but there’s no industrial space available. I really wanted to be in Dorchester, but that didn’t work.”

After investigating properties in the Freeport Street area unsuccessfully, she found a location in the industrial area of Charlestown, and a small-business friendly landlord in Greg Berberian, who is well-known for giving new ideas a chance at his properties.

Chow signed up 100 restaurants in the Boston area to recycle their wooden chopsticks and began collecting them last spring. While she has more than 3 million chopsticks collected (that’s about 15,000 pounds) and a six-month backlog, the search for space held her up from starting production for some time.

Now, however, they are up and running.

“We went into production just after Labor Day,” she said. “It’s been over a month, and we struggle with worker shortages like everyone else, but it’s going well. We want it to be a place where all of us are pitching in.”

One of the restaurants that signed up immediately was Pho Hoa Anh Hong Restaurant on Dorchester Avenue near Fields Corner.

“ChopValue is making it easy for restaurants to make sustainable choices” said Tam Le, co-owner of Pho Hoa Anh Hong. “Not only are they recycling a large portion of our waste at no cost, but they are also providing locally made, recycled products at a reasonable price.”

Other establishments recycling chopsticks with Chow include China Pearl, Wagamama, Koreana, Shabu Zen, and Blue Ribbon Sushi.

Once delivered to the micro-factory, chopsticks by the hundreds are loaded in a sorting machine that divvies them up into portions that can be loaded into a square rack about the size of a dinner plate. Once all the racks are loaded, the chopsticks are heavily coated with a safe, water-based resin and left to dry overnight. The next day, they are broken apart into individual sticks and put into a heat steam press, which delivers 2,000 psi of pressure to create a one-inch block of what Chow calls a “raw tile.”

“Raw tiles are the building blocks for everything we produce,” she said.

The tiles can be planed, sanded, and cut down to size. To make tables or furniture, the tiles are assembled in pieces, or to make custom coasters, they are planed down and cut to size. In addition to using recycled materials and preventing virgin materials from being used, the process cuts down on carbon emissions by reducing shipping and keeping a tight, circular economy.

Anything made in the factory is carbon negative, and, she said, they can even ship products to the West Coast, and they will be at least carbon neutral.

Currently, the factory has room to triple production, add three shifts, and a second hot press, and still not run out of room. There is, she said, ample room for expansion. Even the excess sawdust, she added, is collected by an outfit in Gardner, Mass., and used for compost.

“Even though we’re a small operation, I believe we can have a significant impact,” said Chow.