Pen or Pencil?
Most people have heard the saying 'the pen is mightier than the sword', but I wonder if it is environmentally friendlier than the pencil?
BiC, which is just one pen producing company sells an average of 57 pens (globally) every second and has done so since it launched in 1950. That’s over 3000 every minute, over 200,000 every hour and over 4 million every day!
4 million pens every day, for 68 years? Math never was my strong suit but even I can work out that the answer to that equation is a staggeringly ginormous figure!
And where to they end up? According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA,) Americans throw 1.6 billion in the trash every year. Add in the figures for all the other countries that use pens, and I'm imagining a pile of pens high enough to rival Mt Kosciusko, Mt Kilimanjaro or even Mt Everest. Somehow, I can't imagine Mt Penwaste becoming a holiday destination...can you?
So, are pencils better than pens? Let’s look at some facts:
* Pens are made from plastic, which requires oil and other chemicals. Plastic doesn't biodegrade and will last in the environment for ever. The ink in a pen is made up of two main components - dyes and solvents. Depending on the manufacturer, the dye may be sourced from plants, mineral deposits or chemical synthesis.
* Pencils are made from two pieces of soft wood glued together around the 'lead', which is actually a mixture of clay and graphite. A 2020 article from the world atlas website says that approximately 82,000 trees are cut down annually to make pencils. Where the wood comes from could therefore be an issue, although some major brands like Faber-Castell say their wood is now sourced from sustainable plantations.
And if we get into the nitty gritties:
* Heat-moulding is required in the production of both pens and pencils… which means energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from both.
* Being of a fairly similar weight and size, the fuel, energy and cost of transporting and distributing pens and pencils is fairly even.
* And which lasts longer is debatable. How many times have you had a pencil that has been dropped and, no matter how many times you sharpen it; it just keeps breaking? Or the pen, which you can see still contains ink, but for some reason just doesn't want to work?
But... pencils biodegrade and completely disappear. Plastic pens, even when they’ve stopped working, will last forever… and potentially end up killing marine life and birds. As you sharpen your pencil, you can add the shavings to your worm farm or compost and when your pencil is too short to use anymore you can pop the leftover in the compost.
If you haven't already guessed... I'm going to give the pencil a big thumbs up and the pen.. a big thumbs down!
(Obviously, there's some documents in life that legally need to be done with a pen... so maybe having one or two refillable pens is necessary)
I’m guessing that you probably have more than a few plastic pens currently lying around… in your desk, handbag, car, junk drawer…so let’s finish with 5 simple steps on how to reduce waste by transitioning from the pen to the pencil:
1. First, immediately stop buying pens and stop accepting free pens! They are such an affordable piece of marketing material that just about every company has them. (I even had 500 made when I first launched Healthy Clean and Green!)
2. Round up all the pens you have and use them.
3. As they run out of ink or stop working recycle them appropriately – in most places this means NOT in your curb side recycling bin so make sure you check with your council. I currently drop mine in the recycling boxes at Officeworks.
4. Invest in a good quality refillable pen to keep on hand for legal documents
5. Start using pencils for writing with and composting the shavings and stubs (Even better; where possible go paperless and use the note function on your phone instead!)
Switching from a pen to a pencil… it might seem like a simple and small thing to do… but don’t forget… small changes, big impact!