[General] one-time-use

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Ashiuhto

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Please help me correct the following paragraph. Thanks!

For another thing, the use of one-time-use products such as disposable wood or bamboo chopsticks is widely seen as a waste of limited resources. According to a study, China’s disposable chopstick addiction is destroying its forests. As a result, severe deforestation has become one of China's gravest environmental problems. This widespread use of disposable chopsticks has proved detrimental for the environment.
 

BobK

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I see no specifically grammatical problem, though from an environmental point of view I'd question the use of 'widely seen'. ;-)

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Ashiuhto

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What is the better expression of 'widely seen'?
 

emsr2d2

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I don't mind "one-time-use/one-time use" but I'd probably refer to them as "single-use".
 

emsr2d2

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I was going to suggest that too but the word "disposable" appears four words later in the original piece.
 

Tdol

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I would use second-hand before pre-used, regardless of usage patterns, and one-time-use seems to be up there in the terrible terminology that I won't adopt category. I could settle on single-use, but creating euphemisms beyond that is an exercise that strikes me as pointless.
 

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I can't say I like 'one-time use', but it seems to me there is a distinction to be made between 'single use' (example - paper underwear) and 'one-time use' (example a ring-pull can, or a fuse wire - which is designed to fail once and only once (failing in a predictable way is its job).

Ashiuto: As I said, I was making a point about the environment (not to be pursued here - but worth describing, so that the point I'm making about semantics comes across). To say something is 'widely seen as X' suggests that there is a (sane) alternative view - so that you could say 'which are widely seen as an X, although the NNN see them as a Y'. '[D]isposable wood or bamboo chopsticks' just are a waste of limited resources. What could be said is that not everyone recognizes or cares about this. So if you want a participle in your sentence you could say '..., which are widely recognized to be a waste...'

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emsr2d2

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The chopsticks piece is for a school competition. Getting us to rewrite it is cheating.

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