Choose Green Report: Writing Instruments

June 1998

An interesting read for consumers, office managers, manufacturers, and trivia buffs, this Green Seal report delivers a brief history of pencils, pens, crayons, and markers. The common-sense recommendations for selecting these instruments might not offer much to the already environmentally conscious, but after reading about the dismal state of consumer plastics recycling in a section called “A Word on Plastics,” Green Seal’s cardinal rules will be indelible: choose recycled and refillable products. Even more enlightening is the short discussion of inks and packaging, which not only stresses the importance of nontoxic inks in the products themselves, but how this principle also applies to the printing processes used on the packaging. While this information is geared toward consumers, manufacturers and product designers may read between the lines: Products housed in lightweight, recycled-content packaging printed with nontoxic inks may offer competitive advantage. Finally, download this report for The Recommended Products Table, if nothing else. Here you’ll find the names and numbers of manufactures who not only are thinking outside of the box, but are sure to have found a way to recycle the box into their products — which include pencils that reincarnate old blue jeans, refillable pens nestled in hand-collected twigs, soybean crayons, and markers with food-grade inks.