Friday, May 30, 2008

Pens make me mad.

Hey, so I'm a pen user, but I keep on having to throw them out. I mean, most pens (that I have used) aren't filled as much as they can be with ink, so that you use more and buy more. That's great for the pen company, but that is a lot of plastic we (or maybe just me) are throwing away. If there is a way these can be recycled that you guys know about, then let me know, because I've found nothing so far. We could fill the GreenHouse and maybe even academic buildings on campus with recycled pens, but still I'm wondering what we could do with all the plastic pens that we use on a daily basis. Then the other option is to use pencils, not mechanic pencils...
And while I was looking for new ideas on this subject I came across 2 blogs by Moms (I think), and they're pretty interesting. One is called Crunchy Chicken (a very enticing blog name), which is about doing the practical stuff to be eco friendly (she calls this the Extreme Eco ThrowDown). The other blog is another woman's response to cutting out all plastic for the Extreme Eco ThrowDown and her dilemma with disposable plastic pens.
So, hey, this is what I've been thinking about lately. Help me out if you can. Thanks!

-Emily

2 comments:

Paul said...

Wow Emily - I've never thought of the sustainability of pens before. Nice. I just did some googling and apparently there's a whole blog about pens: penquest.wordpress.com
We should request that they do a sustainability article or something.

I'm a pen user myself and have been for quite some time now. Anyways, I'm currently using a uniball Signo 207 Micro, which is almost like those Pilot G2 gel pens everyone has. The cool thing is that you can replace the ink things in the middle, so while it's still a plastic pen it is at least half replaceable. That is, however, assuming you don't lose it first. A lost regular old pencil just degrades into the soil...a cool concept.

Maybe we should go back to using quills and fountain pens?

Unknown said...

quills and fountain pens!!!!

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