Bury your Bic?

Back-to-School shopping for biodegradable pens and pencils

The Plastic Bits article I posted a few weeks ago discussed how active compost and recycle efforts in your household will significantly reduce what you throw in the trash. In fact, most of what an eco-friendly household throws away is plastic that can’t be recycled. You know… things like disposable pens.

I just learned that Paper Mate and Bic have two new eco-friendly lines of pens and pencils. Paper Mate’s Biodegradable pens and pencils are made from corn-based materials that can be thrown in your compost bin, or buried in the ground. Within one year, they become dirt. It could be a fun little test for your kids to bury a biodegradable pen and a regular plastic pen, dig up in a year, and see the difference.

Bic’s new ECOlutions™ line of writing instruments and notepads made from varying degrees of recycled materials. Despite the title of this article, the Bic writing instruments are not compostable; however, they help reuse materials that would otherwise go into landfills.

Susan Wilson’s Green.Blorge article posted May 5 2010 provides more details on the products mentioned here.

Back-to-School shopping is in full swing right now, and making eco-friendly school supply choices is a simple thing all Ordinary Environmentalists can do to reduce and reuse inorganic materials.