The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Does anyone remember the funny Staples commercial?  It makes me smirk every time, and now  at Christmas when I hear the original tune, I think of the commercial ;)

Well, the "most wonderful time of year" when the kids head back to school and hit the books, is just a few days away.  So why not send them back with a few eco-friendly school supplies?  One of my favorite green pens is the Pilot Bottle 2 Pen or B2P.  It's the "world's first pen made from recycled bottles", writes nice and smooth, and the kids can brag that they are using a pen made from 89% post-consumer recycled plastic bottles.   

It's hard to believe but my youngest is about to begin his last year of elementary school.  A few things almost all elementary school teachers ask children to bring are crayons, colored pencils, and markers to school.  For years my top pick has been Crayola.  Not only do I like Crayola's products, but I'm thrilled with their green initiatives.  Crayola is committed to using renewable energy, reducing waste, and "helping protect the environment, so children have a cleaner, greener planet".   Crayola's initiative to harness the power of the sun, and build a 30,000 panel solar farm on 20-acres of it's land is impressive.  According to Crayola, the panels produce enough power to make 1 billion Crayola crayons and 500 million markers a year.  Not only are their markers made with solar power, but they are manufactured with re-ground plastic scrap from marker production.  Although the entire marker is not recyclable, the #5 plastic caps can be recycled, and if the tip and reservoir are removed, the marker barrels can also be recycled.  Finally, Crayola's colored pencils are never made from endangered or rainforest wood, but are made from reforested wood; for every tree used, another of the same kind is planted. 

When it comes to paper, there are many eco-friendly options as well.  Staples sells Eco-friendly composition books and wirebound notebooks made with 80% sugarcane waste and printed with "eco-conscious vegetable-and-water based inks."  Other options, available at Target are the trendy and cute Greenroom products made with soy inks and recycled paper; recycled paper notebooks, recycled 3-ring binders, tree-free notebooks made from banana paper, recycled file folders, and recycled journals.

Even pencils, a staple for the school-bound, are now more eco-friendly.  For precision pencils, there are Pentel EnerGize-X Mechanical pencils made of 84% recycled plastic and making them more eco-friendly is the fact that they are refillable.  For traditional pencils think "green"...not only are the Paper Mate Earth Write pencils green on the outside, but they are also green on the inside and made with 100% recycled wood.

So send them back with some guilt free eco-friendly products and as they board the bus and you wave good-bye, go ahead and smirk as "The Most Wonderful Time of the Year" commercial plays in your head.  

Back to School Supplies

Wow, back-to-school prep and activities have been keeping us pretty busy!  We are finally settling into the schedules for 4 different schools, homework, sports, and other activities...as soon as September comes, it's like the pulse of the family starts to race!

The back-to-school supply lists that come home are usually pretty classic, including scissors, pens, pencils, notebooks, crayons and markers.  Even before my family had school supply lists, in fact as soon as each child was old enough to hold a pencil, they've been scribbling, doodling, and creating with Crayola products.  I guess you could say, they've always been a family favorite.  This year when it was time to sift through the supply lists for my kids, it brought a smile to my face and warmed my heart when I learned about Crayola's new "Eco-Evolution" and the greening of their products by using renewable energy, protecting the rainforests, and by reducing waste.  http://www.crayola.com/green/

Sweet Pea was the first to notice the new initiatives by Crayola.  She brought me her crayon box and showed me that they now are using solar power to make 1/3 of their crayons, which is equal to about a billion crayons each year made with solar power.  To accomplish this, they built a 15-acre solar farm with 26,000 panels.  Pretty impressive!  Wonder if they'll name a crayon, "solar panel blue"?

To "green" their colored pencils, they produced them with reforested wood which is wood taken from special tree farms grown specifically for harvesting, and not from tropical rain forest.  Crayola plants new trees for every one tree used to make the pencils.  Maybe they should name one of the green pencils "sustainable harvest green"  :)

And black is now in vogue at crayola...you may have noticed that Crayola colored markers have black barrels instead of white. Crayola is now using recycled plastic bottle caps to make the marker barrels.  In addition, plastic scraps from making marker casings are crushed into tiny pellets and put back into the system. The black color of the barrels allows more recycled plastic to be used, in turn keeping 1 million pounds of plastic bottle caps and scrap plastic out of  landfills.


During my back-to-school supply shopping, I found a "green" highlighter by Pentel.  It is part of the new Recycology™ the Science of Reduce, Reuse and Recycle program, which Pentel developed "to enhance its mission of helping the environment by creating less waste and increasing recycling activity" through innovative product design and manufacturing.  With this line of products, Pentel's goal is to "protect natural resources and the environmental at all stages of the manufacturing process" and it is accomplished by using a minimum of 50% recycled content (excluding consumable content and refills).   


The Handy-lineS, ultraslim highlighters I found are made from 54% post consumer recycled plastic.  I also like that they are retractable and refillable, creating less waste.  Even the packaging is made from cardstock that is 100% recycled, and the plastic blister front piece is a minimum of 25% recycled material!

There are many outstanding products in this line, including the popular mechanical pencil leads which come in 100% recycled plastic case, many pens, white board marker, and permanent markers made with 50-80% recycled plastic www.pentel.com .  I like that Pentel is recycling products that would otherwise end up in the landfill. 


Paper Mate also has green products that are impressive.  Their line of biodegradable pens and pencils, have barrels that unscrew and are made from corn-based material.  After removing the interior plastic/ink piece that is not biodegradable, the barrel decomposes in the compost or landfill in about a year.  They also have products made from recycled materials such as their correction film (67% recycled material), ball point pens made with 70-80% recycled materials.  I found the Earth Write pencils and added that to our back-to-school supply pile.  These pencils are made from 100% recycled cedar.  They also participate with Terracycle one of my favorite eco-entrepreneurial companies that up-cycling materials using innovative designs http://papermate.com/Pages/terracycle.aspx.   

So while there may have been a tad bit of back to school blues that banished quickly as our daily pace quickened ...we also found some back-to-school green to start the year off write ;)  I'm sure you found many green school supplies in your travels too.  Leave a comment to let me know what you've found! 


Sources:
http://www.crayola.com/canwehelp/contact/faq_view.cfm?id=100
http://www.crayola.com/green/products.cfm
http://www.crayola.com/green/presskit.cfm
http://www.pentel.com/recycology/index.html
http://www.pentel.com/recycology/press.html 
http://papermate.com/Pages/biodegradeable.aspx