“We Made Plastic. We Depend On It. Now We’re Drowning In It”, states the title of a recent article published by the National Geographic (1) – a sentiment being echoed across the globe. The point is, what can we do about it? Are alternatives to plastic the only way forward, or can we find a new way to deal with the billions of tonnes already on our planet?
Here at Pen Warehouse, we agree that sustainable products and green trends are a great way forward in reducing both the amount of plastic being used and our product’s end of life effect on the environment. But what do we do with what we already have?
Plastic is everywhere within the promotional products sector, in our products and our packaging. In fact, 40% of plastic produced worldwide is being used for packaging purposes (2) and over 350 million tonnes of it was produced in 2018 alone! (3) Our director, Helen Dyl, and our Head of R&D, Dr Rebecca Townsend, recently took part in a one-day conference, looking at precisely this problem; How to reduce plastic waste across the board without limiting our product quality.
Many of the speakers present at the conference stressed the same key topics, “Circular Economy”, “Product Impact Assessments” and most importantly, “Plastic is Not the Enemy.” So, we looked into these concepts in more depth and how we could apply them to our own business!
“Plastic is not the enemy!” was the opinion expressed in the first talk of the day, delivered by Professor Rosalind Malcolm (Director of Environmental Regulatory Research Group at the University of Surrey). A world without plastics is almost unimaginable – they’re found everywhere, from our mobile phones to space rockets and from food packaging to essential medical supplies. In fact, many people have tried to live without plastic, all you have to do is search YouTube for their accounts and it’s safe to say, it was a struggle! So how do we combat this? Do we really want to give up plastics entirely?
Our answer to this question is an emphatic no! Plastic is an important part of our lives and, more specifically, it plays a vital role in the promotions industry with its versatility, abundance and cost effectiveness. In fact, the plastics industry employs 1.6 million people in Europe alone (3). What we really need to do is change our behaviour. This point was made categorically by Dutch speaker Arnoud Passenier, (Senior Program Manager Circular Economy, Netherlands Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management). We need to stop thinking of plastic as a single-use commodity, thrown into the rubbish as soon as we’re done with it. Plastic is recyclable, our pens are recyclable and even the insides are recyclable when separated. So, why aren’t we doing this?
The biggest buzzwords of the day was “Circular Economy”, so we looked into this in more detail and the effect it would have on our society and business.
Circular Economy
A circular economy is an alternative to our current model (make, use, dispose). Instead of disposing of products at the end of their life cycle, we keep products and resources for as long as possible, extracting their maximum value at all stages of the supply chain and then recovering and regenerating these materials at the end of each service life. This approach in particular is seen as the way forward by many of the experts on the panel, including Dr Marcus Gover (Chief Executive Officer at WRAP), and is gaining increasing popularity worldwide as a means of tackling our plastic pollution problem among others. Look out for our upcoming blog post where we’ll be delving into this topic in more detail!
To learn more about Circular Economy, check out this interesting video by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, or visit their official website for more information.
To make such a drastic change to our behaviour and how we treat our plastics, the change needs to be taken up by everyone from the supplier to the end user. At The Pen Warehouse, we’ve been putting this into action by working with our suppliers to make sure they use the most eco-friendly packaging and transport methods while reducing the amount of plastic packaging needed, among many more initiatives. Read more about our packaging changes here.
Out of a number of valuable suggestions we took from this conference, an immediately implementable action is “product impact assessments”, which prompts us to examine our products, their impact on the environment and what we can do to reduce this impact. In fact, many of our products have minimal end of life environmental impact, such as our Mood® Collection reusable water bottles.
As for pens, how about opting for one of our sustainable fountain pens, nicknamed “The Pen for Life”? The refillable fountain pen is the only truly environmentally-friendly pen. And what makes it the perfect environmentally-friendly pen? Well, apart from requiring the odd top up with fresh ink, nothing else is used or disposed of. This is because each refillable fountain pen comes with a device that enables the user to draw ink from an ink bottle with minimum mess and fuss. Watch this space for a future article on the Pen for Life.

Our sustainable Pen for Life Fountain Pen
In Summary
We were incredibly inspired by the discussions at the Westminster Energy, Environment & Transport Forum and we can’t wait to start putting all of the innovative ideas we learnt into practice. Attending forums such as this is a great way for businesses to see the long-term picture of sustainability and to learn effective methods of waste reduction that make a real difference.
Please see below for some upcoming events which we urge you and your colleagues to get involved with. Covering all aspects of sustainability, these forums provide a platform for education and discussion hosted by experts in the field of sustainability. Events such as these are guaranteed to get you thinking and motivate you to become part of the change, providing forward-thinking ideas which you can weave into your own business practices.
Edie Sustainability Leaders Forum: 4&5/2/2020 – A multi-award-winning event uniting business leaders and sustainability decision-makers from the world’s most influential companies, along with climate experts, policymakers, NGOs and investors with a collective purpose: to transform business, for good.
Guildford Environmental Forum – Climate Emergency Talk: 15/1/2020 – A discussion on climate change emergency held by members of the GEF’s Climate Crises Group.
The Future of Waste Management and the Circular Economy Forum: 25/2/2020 – Practical guidance on how the local government and voluntary sector can work together in partnership to reduce the amount of waste and improve recycling across the UK.
References
- https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/2018/05/we-made-plastic-we-depend-it-now-were-drowning-it
- https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782
- https://www.plasticseurope.org/application/files/9715/7129/9584/FINAL_web_version_Plastics_the_facts2019_14102019.pdf
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