DOLLAR STORE CRAYONS
Anyone on a budget knows the cheapest place to get school supplies is the dollar store. But last month a report from Environmental Working Group Action Fund found four brands of dollar store crayons contaminated with asbestos. Crayons labelled Disney Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Nickelodeon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Sabans Power Ranger Super Mega Force and Amscan Crayons all tested positive. All four were purchased from American Dollar Tree stores. Is the asbestos in these a threat? The U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission says the risk of asbestos inhalation is extremely low, but EWG says any asbestos exposure risk is unacceptable. At least Crayola’s are in the clear, but who needs the petrol sticks anyway when you can get Eco-Kids Crayons made of (now palm-free) plant-based waxes and veggie/mineral pigments tested to California standards?
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PAPERMATE
A lot of the big office supply companies offer token green products, and Papermate is no exception. Big stores like Grand & Toy and Staples carry Papermate’s 55-to-85-per-cent-recycled pens in bulk. Why aren’t all their pens made with recycled content? That would make them real leaders.
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BUFFALO NATUR
This Quebec-based company offers both conventional and green office supplies, including pencils from recycled newspapers, highlighters and pens from 59-to-90-per-cent-recycled plastic, bamboo solar-powered calculators, jute pencil cases and corn-plastic scissors and geometry sets. Whether the corn plastic items are as biodegradable as the company claims is up for debate. (Does anything fully biodegrade in dark, airless landfills?) Grassroots on the Danforth and some Shoppers Drug Marts carry Buffalo Natur products. Downside: like most other school supplies, these are made in China.
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ME TO WE
Students hell-bent on changing the world will no doubt be familiar with Free the Children’s Me to We social enterprise, which gives half the profits from clothing, jewellery, etc, back to the non-profit. It’s teamed up with Staples again this year to sell backpacks, laptop sleeves, notebooks, water canisters, gift pens and coloured pencils. Some are made with partly recycled materials. It’s too bad that none of their writing instruments are. But nearly all of them let you track your impact so you can learn more about how your purchase gives medical treatment or clean water for one year to a child in need. Mostly made in China.
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R3VOLVED
The 3 Rs usually mean “reduce, reuse, recycle,” but to this Toronto company they stand for “recovered, remade, reloved.” These folks started off making a massive array of custom corporate products out of recycled materials. They’re now focusing on cranking out school supplies made entirely from recycled pop bottles (well, except the inks and metals within), including pens, staplers, dry-erase markers, highlighters, rulers, scissors – the works. They say, so far, they’ve diverted over 300,000 bottles this back-to-school season. Bonus points for the fact that their pens that are refillable, though for now you have to buy refills from office supply stores. Like everyone else’s stuff, they’re made in China, though at third-party-monitored factories. Kind of annoying that these products are only available at Walmart, but you can also shop at r3volved.com.
