Carrying the European EN-71 safety approval certification, these eco-friendly pencils are as safe for your kid’s sustainable pencil case as they are for the planet. The most recyclable piece of a pencil is the ferrule, the metal piece that holds the rubber/eraser in place. This can be made from brass or aluminum. Both metals can be easily recycled in large quantities. In case you haven’t noticed, Onyx + Green is perhaps the biggest name in sustainable school supply brands. Wooden pencils usually fall into the latter category. The pencil shavings/stubs are too small to be sorted unless gathered up in large quantities. If your child doesn’t need a filled pencil case and is just looking for a ruler there are a few different options available. There are quite a few bamboo rulers of differing lengths you can buy, alternatively why not buy a stainless steel ruler. If you’re ok with plastic (at least a ruler isn’t single use!), then make sure you buy a recycled plastic one.

Use: Pencils usually have a shorter lifespan than pens. Also, many plastic pens have refillable inkjets. Thus, based on length of use, pens are usually deemed more environmentally friendly than pencils. To counter this, however, most people usually have more pens than they need at the moment; and so, pens are consumed at a similar rate as pencils.

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My personal preference here would be to buy a canvas bag as I prefer not to buy any plastic at all (when possible), but they aren’t always the best in a rainy UK. You can waterproof canvas yourself by waxing it, or you can compromise and go for a bag made from recycled materials. Hemp From Hamburg, Germany, Sujittra loved coming up with “smart and functional designs” out of recycled natural materials like cork, kraft paper, wood, and leaves. After you or your kiddos have scribbled the pencil to a point it’s no longer usable, simply turn upside down and plant the small seed capsule for a green gift. The ferrule, that metal part of pencils used to hold the erasers, are also not biodegradable. The metal cylinder is called a pencil ferrule and is traditionally made of, for example, brass or aluminum. Most pencil ferrules are however made from brass in view of their increased strength over the aluminum.

All ingredients are sourced from American farms and have been grown without pesticides or herbicides. With a choice of 100% recycled polyester (from recycled water bottles) or 100% recycled nylon (from industry offcuts), you simply can’t go wrong with these eco-friendly options.

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I’m a big fan of natural colours so when I spotted this pencil case I was immediately interested. It’s really more of a wallet than a pencil case but I really like that, and at least it’ll be different to everyone else’s! First of all, please do not throw your old pencils away. There are so many uses they do have in addition to writing or making drawings with them yourself, which include: 1. Donating to those who need it most Nonetheless, it is still necessary to keep pencil wastes from landfills, if only to make up for the number of trees used in producing them. One way to do this is to use up every single centimeter of the pencil. In this way, useful pencils would not end up in the trash. Agood Company is just that, a good company in the way they are making a big difference in the lives of those living without clean drinking water, through Charity Water. So as you work through all your scattered lists, you can toss these pieces of recycled stationery in your indoor compost bin instead of worrying about whether they’ll get recycled or not.

You should however have some choice available to you when buying school shirts and jumpers. Always try to go for 100% natural cotton (organic and sustainable ideally) or other natural material. There are already enough micro-plastics in the sea and the environment that wherever you can you should avoid plastic in your clothes. Most pencils are made of biodegradable materials, while some others (like those with plastic casing) are not. Nevertheless, not all parts of pencils made mostly with biodegradable materials are biodegradable. If you’re impressed, these artsy sustainable stationery products, books, and greeting cards are made from recycled content and their production methods are powered by recaptured landfill gas (which is so cool). BY COPALA’s minimalist, zero waste, and vegan laptop sleeves protect your sustainable electronics while also protecting the planet.

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Source Materials: Most pens are made of polystyrene or similar plastics. About 70 tons of plastic are made into non-reusable pens every day. There are certain demerits of polystyrene: First, it is made from petroleum, one of the key pollutants of the climate today, and second, it is not easy to dispose of it after you are done using it. With so many nature-inspired cover designs printed using soy inks, you can get something different for each subject or mood. This is a more traditional looking pencil case but is made from recycled Jute fabric. They can also be used to hold make up. The most traditional of all of them, but this one is not made from natural materials. It is, however, made from 95% post-consumer recycled material, so you’re helping to reduce the amount sent to landfill. You might want to try purchasing eco-friendly pencils that are produced from recycled materials. There are also seed pencils like Sprout that contain seeds. All you need to do is to plant the stub of your pencil when you are done using it and voila: you have a new vegetable or tree in your garden within a month!

Now that I’m a parent, I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I’ve loved getting my daughter excited about started school for the first time. On the other, so many of the items on her school’s list were so ridiculously specific that we had to go to four or five stores just to find them.Confusingly the description calls them batik bone pens but says they’re made from wood; it’s possible that they include bone or that’s just the name of the style… Next, we look for recycled stationery and recycled school supplies. This might mean recycled plastic, paper, or even agricultural waste, just depending on what supplies we’re talking about. Let’s be honest, your teenager would probably love to walk around with a cannabis design on their bag, but their school, or you, might not be as keen. Hemp is a great eco-friendly material, but it is very hard to find hemp bags without some sort of hemp related motif on them. Pencils on the other hand are usually sourced from wood and graphite. We have already seen that wood used in making pens might add up to a whooping 80,000 trees every year. Graphite mining also makes use of machinery that might add to the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. On this point, it is really hard to decide which is better.