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Eco-review: Terracycle office products

I was asked to review some products from TerraCycle, and to my joy found it to be stationery. I’m a Gemini, I love stationery. I collected stickers, paper, erasers, pens, in fact any type of stationery as a child, and still do have those tendencies, but I digress.

Item #1 is an Eco-Binder, made out of 100% recycled paper and 90% recycled steel. An attractive and sturdy binder. And once you have finished using your binder, Terracycle takes them back for further recycling.

Item #2 is Banana Paper. Yes, you guessed it… paper made out of recycled banana peels. There is none of that classic banana smell or to us scientific folk, no isoamyl acetate odour. The paper is compatible with ink jet and laser printers and copy machines. Save the rain forests, eat bananas!

Item #3 is a newspaper pencil. A whole sheet of newspaper is rolled around good quality graphite to form a trunk as hard as wood. Approximately 4 pencils can be made form each sheet of newspaper. I think the fun part of these pencils is that over time the oils from your hand will highlight the newsprint visible on the pencil surface.

Item #4 is definitely the coolest item of the bunch: A corn pen. Everything, but the ink refill, is made from material derived from corn starch, and will degrade within 12 months of being discarded.

And last but not least, item #5, the paper pen. Like the corn pen, everything but the ink refill is made from 100% biodegradable materials. In this case, the materials are used newspapers and 100% recycled paper.

Such fun items, and all can be used with a clean conscience.

This is a guest post by Carolyn Algar, our correspondent in Charlotte, North Carolina.