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O'BON notebooks and bagasse

O'BON now offers A5 and A6 notebooks. These have great designs including our fruit and wildlife series art. They are extremely attractive, and these notebooks are receiving rave reviews. Orders are extremely good. But, what I wanted to mention about these notebooks is our paper.
The paper is not recycled, but rather comes from the pulp and fiber of sugarcane. This is called bagasse. Many environmentalists know this word and know about this paper. For others, bagasse might be a new word. Bagasse is the byproduct left over when sugarcane juice is extracted from the sugarcane plant. The leftover fiber is easily converted to paper.
So, our bagasse notebooks fall under the reuse and not the recycle idea of the 3Rs. From an eco-friendly standpoint, bagasse is great. So little energy is required to grow sugarcane and to turn the pulp into paper. Less energy, less pollution, no toxic chlorine to whiten the paper - sounds great doesn't it? You can go here to learn more about bagasse and its wonderful qualities.

A Pencil that doesn't break!!!!

Many pencil users are in disbelief about O'BON claiming that our pencils don't break. Now, we are not saying that they never break, but it is damn hard to break the lead in an O'BON pencil. We ask you to do the SMASH test.
The SMASH test involves taking a sharpened O'BON pencil and a wood pencil in one hand. Make sure they are sharpened. Then smash both the pencils on the edge of a table. Don't hit the point, but the body of the pencil. Smash it repeatedly - hard. I mean hard. Now wiggle the point. Still intact, probably both pencils seem to be ok. Now sharpen them.
Test Results:
The O'BON pencil lead is not cracked and works fine. The other pencil lead is cracked and the point wiggles and easily come out when pulled.

How is this possible?
Many think that the O'BON doesn't break because it is cushioned by the newspaper. This is not the correct answer. The O'BON pencil is made by wrapping old newspaper 36 times around the graphite. The graphite is sealed in - airtight. There is no air gap inside, so when the pencil is smashed on the table or drops on the floor, there is no vibration inside the barrel. Wood pencils are made with two slates of wood, grooved for the lead and glued together. There is always an air gap - an air grap allows vibration inside the pencil against the fragile graphite. So, snap, crackle, pop!
Another reason why we claim our pencils are "the world's greatest pencil."

Xmas with O'BON...Happy Holidays

O'BON LLC recently imported its first container of pencils into the USA. They had to pay 114% duty on the recycled pencils. This is to stop "dumping." The money paid to customs for "dumping" goes directly to support the pencil industry in the USA. This would all be understandable if "dumping" was involved and, more importantly, there was a recycled pencil industry effected by the "dumping." Bare with me on my logic.
O'BON imports recycled newspaper pencils and the 114% tax goes to support the USA wood pencil industry. Excuse me, where is the logic in this? Cutting down trees to make pencils, to us, is a bad use of our limited resources and the wood cutting industry plays a big part in global warming through deforestation. Wood pencils are part of this problem. So, for O'BON to simply give this money to wood pencil manufacturers seems unfair and unjust. Our concept, technology and innovation supports an old, outdated and global warming industry. The energy consumed and the footprint size of wood pencil manufacturers is big. Frankly, O'BON is appalled and seeks any advice out of this situation. Giving our money to wood pencil manufacturers is painful for us.
If our money went to the recycled newspaper pencil business in the USA, this would be tolerable, but to support wood cutting and deforestation is beyond acceptable. Any ideas?

When our vans visit a school, we do cause a ruckus.  "Mr. O'BON is coming, Ms. O'BON is coming."  Our representatives provide recycle, environmental information to the school kids and support recycling efforts of the school.  We are more than just a recycle pencil company.