By John DeFore

Barring a mass return to quill-and-ink pot technology, one way to green the world’s desk drawers is to pump up the percentage of recycled materials in office supplies. Pentel is working that angle aggressively with a Recycology line that touches on most of the popular ways to manually put words and pictures on paper: Its pencils, gel and fiber-tipped pens, and permanent markers are all made with a high percentage of recycled plastic.

None of the items contains less than 50% recycled material in its body (ink and lead, of course, don’t count in that percentage); some are well over that threshold, like a “Cool Lines” pencil that is 75% recycled and 67% post-consumer waste.

In addition to behind-the-scenes green efforts the company says it has made for decades, these writing instruments are designed to have the longest useful lives possible: the refillable pencils have a “lead maximizer” feed system that claims to reduce wasted lead by almost 25%; the markers and highlighters are refillable.

Recycology even offers one or two innovations that would be noteworthy regardless of the line’s eco-friendliness — the company’s new “Handy-line S” markers and highlighters, unlike most similar products, retract into the pen’s body like a click-action ballpoint, meaning there’s no cap to lose; within the body, a clever rotating seal keeps the tip from drying out.

And with a clip design that — amazing but true — forces the writing tip to retract when you clip it into your pocket, Pentel may keep nerds everywhere from needing that dreaded piece of non recycled plastic, the pocket protector.

Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media