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Being authentic may seem more applicable in the worlds of fine art or antiquities than to the challenges faced by those building contemporary workplace systems, but at Aéto, we increasingly see that the best work environments are those where organisations have the clearest sense of who they are. And we think this success is grounded in authenticity. ChopValue, delivers authenticity through an unwavering focus on sustainability in every sense of the word.
ChopValue was founded by wood engineer Felix Böck, who imagined a new lease on life for the estimated 80 billion pairs of disposable chopsticks that make their way from our takeaways into the bin each year.
The defining characteristics of ChopValue are circular economy and sustainability, and this foundation extends beyond just the materials used to manufacture the furniture. The premise is simple – work with local businesses to collect disposable chopsticks, turn them into new products in local Microfactories and then sell the products to business as well as directly to customers.
And the impact is significant: more than 214 million chopsticks have been given a new lease on life as of July 2025, saving more than 11.2 million kg of CO2 emissions while also diverting those chopsticks from ending up in landfills.
To understand more about the impact on a local level, we spoke with James Soback, who is building ChopValue in Japan. Soback pointed out that it’s not just the environment that benefits – the sustainability premise that underpins ChopValue extends to areas like labour.
The first Flagship Microfactory in Japan lies in Kawasaki, a city just 20 km south of Tokyo. The relationships with the businesses that will collect the chopsticks are largely built at the grassroots level, so in Kawasaki, Soback and team are working with a social enterprise called Story Kawasaki.
Story Kawasaki’s mission is to help mums who want to work find employment, and because the ChopValue model relies on local presence and local relationships, the Story Kawasaki partnership enables these women to do meaningful work and leverage their existing relationships with restaurants and hotels in their local community to build the recycling network (ChopValue does not pay businesses to recycle their chopsticks).
On the other end of the spectrum, leadership is also working to build relationships with large corporations, particularly those interested in circular economy and looking at all parts of the supply chain to reach NetZero targets. These organisations have the ability to influence or directly purchase the climate-positive goods ChopValue is creating, and they also are critical partners in the recycling process.
One key partnership Soback is actively building is with Marugame Seimen, a noodle shop in Japan that ChopValue also works with in Canada. Marugame Seimen goes through 1 million chopsticks per day across their 850 outlets in Japan, so getting them on board as a recycling partner would have a significant impact on ChopValue’s mission to redefine the term “waste” as a “resource”.
ChopValue is building more than furniture – they’re building a global community.
At the time of writing, the company currently has over 80 Microfactories in development and is operating in nine countries including Canada, the US, the Philippines and the UK. Soback credits his desire to be involved with building ChopValue Japan to his former employer and mentor Chuck Feeney.
Unlike many billionaires, Chuck Feeney flew below the radar and gave away all his wealth – more than $8 billion – anonymously in his lifetime, epitomising his authenticity. Feeney believed that if you improve the community around you, your business will improve. Soback is taking the same approach as he builds ChopValue in Japan, one chopstick at a time.
More than just a fleeting trend, authenticity has also become embedded in HR and People teams’ vocabulary as part of inclusivity programmes, endorsing colleagues to “be the most authentic version of themselves”, and encouraging them to feel confident expressing who they are at their core, as defined by their thoughts, words and actions. But what happens if you apply that definition to the whole organisation? What if leadership teams could better define the authentic version of their organisation and consider the actions needed to project that sense of “knowing your authentic corporate self” and instilling that in everything they do?
At Aéto, we know having an authentic and strong sense of self-identity is a critical factor in successfully building workplaces that offer employees outstanding experiences, and that’s just what we’re helping our clients do.