On Tuesday, December 11, 2018, Aqura Home Co., Ltd. and THE CAPITOL HOTEL TOKYU jointly announced the launch of the "Wood Straw Project" and the planning, development, supervision, and introduction of the world's first (※1) "wooden straws."

As of April 1, 2019, The Capitol Hotel Tokyu has discontinued the use of plastic straws in all restaurants and bars within the hotel and has introduced wooden straws.

*1 World's first...Wrapping straws in sliced wood, producing them in large quantities, and introducing them to the market
*2 Thinned wood: Wood that has been thinned out to allow forest trees to grow.

The heavy rains that hit Western Japan in July 2018 caused large-scale landslides in many areas, resulting in extensive damage. One of the reasons for this is said to be the lack of timely and appropriate forest management, such as thinning. Thinned wood is thin and immature, so its uses are more limited than primary harvested wood, and demand has plummeted due to the widespread availability of cheap imported wood. This project hopes to help promote the use of thinned wood and contribute to sustainable forest management, such as disaster prevention, by developing, introducing, and spreading "wood straws" made from domestic wood, including thinned wood from all over the country.

The company offers high-quality, reasonably priced homes through its custom-built wooden construction. As a company that provides wooden homes, the company is involved in the "Kibo no Mirai Project" to teach children about the wonders of wood. To date, the company has donated a total of 11,971 desk tops made from thinned wood to elementary schools. The company also holds interactive classes (including well digging) at elementary schools with the aim of deepening students' understanding of the "greatness of forests," "the wonder of wood," and "the fun of making things." In recent years, the company has also been working on wood-based offices using materials from the local prefecture, and has built medium- to large-scale wooden buildings called "Home and Living Salons" at its Saitama Kita branch and Tsukuba branch.

This is the story of how "Kino Straws" was created to utilize thinning materials generated during forest conservation and to solve the problem of disposable plastics, and how it has developed into a universal business model.

In the drama adaptation, our hotel appears as the "Grand Sanno Hotel." We were also used as a filming location for the meeting scene where the decision to introduce wooden straws was made, and the press conference scene.