Green stationary

[toy]

Hi guys,
I happen to work for a multi-national company, actually the biggest in its field. I have recently being paying attention to our way of working, which by the way is a paperless/electronic system (with room for continued improvements), I am still amazed by the ton of stationary used in one single day. Don't get me wrong, every single one of this eventually make its way to a recycling facility (we have an onsite waste management team).
Now to the first phase of my questions:
1) What would be the benefit of introducing recycled stationaries as we do not throw stuff away, but rather recycle them?
Please pardon my ignorance for this second question;
2)Would it be possible to recycle waste generated from using recycled stationaries e.g.notepad, books etc....
Second phase of my question would follow if I get the answers I'm hoping for.
Thanks

[RayB]

Hi Toy,

Yes you can switch to recycled stationery, and yes it can be re-recycled after use in the same way as conventional materials.

I can recommend The Green Stationery Company (http://www.greenstat.co.uk/) for more more information on recycled office stationery.

For printing (business cards, letterheads etc) we offer a wide range of 100% recycled options too (sorry for the plug!)

[Daisy Greeb]

Apparently I cant quote your post (because of the link to your site) as I haven't made enough posts yet!

Have you ever considered selling the eco poly jackets in say 100s? :) I'm sure the demand is there for us smaller businesses (there are a couple of messages on here and I've seen them on other boards as well) - I for instance would straight away buy 100 J4 and J5 from you! ;)

[robwoollen]

I recently took my shredding pile and instead of shredding it, put it in a new folder in my filing cabinet marked SCRAP. I now print on the back of it for rough work and then shred it (assuming it is sensitive). And every time I print rough I turn it round and print it again. Sounds simple....it is! But it is a first for me to make such a specific move (e've all turned the odd page round but this is everything). And it's great!

[Kembali]

We use recycled paper at work and even got a vermicompost for the bio-degradable waste. There are a lot of ways to recycle printer paper too. Use it for notes and rough work,etc. (if we don't need the printed page anymore) till the space runs out and then we just give it for recycling!

[Paola]

Also check out http://www.remarkable.co.uk/
for recyled pens, pencils and mousemats etc. made from plastic and car tyres...they also have a biz. stationery service whereby they can get your own corporate logo on their products-worth checking out for their 'cheeky' style-make great Christmas gifts too! (maybe I should get a job with them as I just gave them a really good plug....)

[Soapnutter]

I've used Remarkable stuff and their quality is good, I use one of their tyre mouse mats at the moment and it's ace.

[toy]

Thanks everyone for your response, a lot of helpful hint there. Thanks paola for the website, i shall be checking it out. I already know about the green stationary company except that when I tried checking their site, there was an error, tried a couple of times after that and same error again and again.
My second question is why is remarkable and the green stationary company and many other companies like this not as successful as the likes of office depot and other stationary companies.
Regards

[Paola]

I guess it's down to advertising and the fact that you don't find these guys on the high street but I hope that we can help raise their profile through forums like this as they deserve to be known and talked about.

I only really found out about them as I have a personal and business interest in all things green and eco and I also subscribe to the New Consumer mag which is good for advertising, a good read and quite a good looking mag. considering it's 'green' (if you know what I mean :)

[akhtarkasia]

Hi,

Green issues are in news everyday. How much we waste, how much we throw away, and what could we do to ensure our childrens and our grand childrens enjoy same level of resources such as clear natural water for granted as we do.

We have to start somewhere and when we spend more time at work than at home its natural that we think about all things Green/Recycled.

On our website www.penNpaper.co.uk about six months ago when no one was taking this issue seriously in our industry we took a stand and started advising customers of green/recycled products.

We created a separate section with thousands of products. Also in normal listing if the product was green/recycled we started highlighting the product with green logo.

But thats not all. Educating customers is easy. You have to actually put this principle to practice. For that in our retail shop in Dewsbury we have bins to recycle Ink Jet Cartridges, Toners and paper.

Our IT guys have bikes and they cycle in this cold weather too. I walk to work and we only have one vehicle in whole of the company for delivery. Non of the staff drives any car to work. Either they walk or take bus. (even as Director of large company my wife is the only one who has car in the family, and that is 1.4l small engine small car)

Waste in the office is kept to minimum too. We only print when we have to. And if there is any waste we use the back page to write our customer queries etc and use it as notepad. Once done we shred all our paper and shredded paper goes into the packaging of goods.

There are number of ways that people can improve the green issues but to tackle anything green you need determination and you should be ready for change.

And as ever change is good.

[miketombs]

I bought some Xerox recycled paper and the quality was terrible. If it's for internal use it's OK, but for sending out it just looks cheap (which it wasn't) and nastry (which it is).

[directform]

Thanks everyone for your response, a lot of helpful hint there. Thanks paola for the website, i shall be checking it out. I already know about the green stationary company except that when I tried checking their site, there was an error, tried a couple of times after that and same error again and again.
My second question is why is remarkable and the green stationary company and many other companies like this not as successful as the likes of office depot and other stationary companies.
Regards

Stationery business is a very low margin business, the only way you could earn a decent profit is to have a big scale operation. I think it will take a while for this green stationery business to kick off. But you never know how will those big players react to the change of consumers buying behaviour, it is not difficult for them to suddenly change their corporate strategy to selling Green products only.