Review: O’Bon Paper and Pencils
By Karina | December 7, 2009
I first read about O’Bon paper and pencils over at The Greenists, and I was excited to request some materials to do my own review. First, O’Bon was exceedingly generous – they sent a notebook of exactly the right size I use every day to keep notes at my day job, a box of pencils, colored pencils, and art pencils. Gracious! Such riches!
O’Bon makes all of their paper products from bagasse, which is the waste fibers from the sugar cane refining process. This material has been in the news lately because some people have been talking about using it as a fuel to replace coal – I must admit that as an American in the land of High Fructose Corn Syrup, I didn’t realize that sugar cane refining waste was such a big issue!
The notebook that was sent to me was the very cute 5×8 bagasse spiral bound notebook with an apple on the cover. It’s really lovely. But what I was most concerned about was the paper quality – it seemed a little thin, really, but after using it for over a month I can say it’s quite strong. When I first got the notebook I did a very unscientific test to see how the paper handed a variety of inks on it – I generally write with a medium nib refillable fountain pen, for example – and here are the results of my test:
I wrote on the paper front and back – click through to see a large sized image. There was hardly any bleed through – the bright xerox scanner makes it seem worse than it is – except for with the thicker sharpie marker.
I also really loved the pencils – they’re made of newsprint wrapped around a stick of graphite, and they look like it too! you can see all of the individual layers, and if I could read Chinese I would be able to catch up on some of the recycled news that formed the outermost layer. Of course I was worried about how well they would sharpen given all of the layers of paper, but it was a piece of cake in both an electric and a manual sharpener. From the O’Bon website:
O’BON was born out of a new, revolutionary process in pencil making. By rolling a used sheet of newspaper around a stick of graphite, we began creating pencils that were superior to the outdated wood versions that are all too common today. Not only does our method protect the graphite much better than the old wood version, our pencils are also the more environmentally responsible choice.
There’s a description of the pencil making process here - and more information here, on their manufacturing page. Apparently they wrap a stick of graphite 48 times in newsprint dipped in a water based glue! Plus their point about avoiding cutting of virgin forests for pencil production is a good one. My day job is engineering, but I am that rare engineer that never really got behind mechanical pencils, no matter how efficient they were. (I can’t stick mechanical pencils behind my ears while I work on other things! They can never be incorporated into a hairstyle!) So these pencils – which really do last longer than traditional pencils, and are also a dream to write with – have been a welcome addition to my desk arsenal.
In fact, I liked everything so much I will probably place an order when it’s time to get a new notebook for my job. Thanks for sending me the materials to review, O’Bon! I’m happy to be introduced to your product.
Have you encountered O’Bon paper and pencils? Any other favorite recycled material stationary supplies out there?
Topics: Waste | 2 Comments »
[...] original here: Review: O'Bon Paper and Pencils | Tiny Choices By admin | category: notebook test | tags: 600-pixels, certainly-playable, first-got, [...]
I think my Whole Foods carries those! The fruit covers look familiar… Now I will look even harder for an excuse to buy a new notebook.