Wooden cutlery is cut and pressed from fast-growing hardwoods such as birch and aspen, sometimes with a food-safe wax or PLA (polylactic acid, a plant-based plastic) coating for mouthfeel.
It replaces single-use plastic forks, knives, spoons, stirrers and chopsticks, which are now banned in the EU, UK, Canada, India and most Australian states.
A 2024 life-cycle assessment (LCA) of banned single-use items and their alternatives (MDPI Microplastics) found plastic cutlery worst in every category except two: water pollution from nutrient run-off (eutrophication) and ozone depletion. On those, corn-based bioplastic (PLA) cutlery was worse by 25 and 35 percent. Wooden cutlery had the lowest impact overall, but a 15 percent higher ozone-depletion score than plastic. Aspenware's LCA with the University of British Columbia found its cutlery composts in under 49 days. A trade source claims a switch from PP to wood cuts carbon per utensil by about 73 percent if the wood is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified and the cutlery is composted.
Drawbacks: still single use, so reusable cutlery is better; forest sourcing must be FSC or Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC); some coated wood cutlery includes wax or PLA; mouthfeel complaints. Cost is a small premium over plastic.