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 Our concept, technology and innovation supports an old, outdated and global warming industry.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.

World's Longest Recycled Colored Pencil

This was an exciting project we recently did in Malaysia.  With a local kindergarten chain, we assembled tons of kids and make an extremely long recycled colored pencil.  This was made up of O'BON colored pencils placed carefully in a series of recycled drums.  But, the main fun was seeing the happiness on the kids' faces for a job well done.  Great job Krista!

O'BON is "Something Different."

Sharpening an O'BON pencil and see the difference.  No wood comes out, but rather a thin layer of newspaper.  If you are really lucky, you sometimes can see the characters.  Yes, characters not letters!  This is because we use recycled newspaper from China.   Anyway, back to our swirl.  That is what we call it - the shavings coming out of the pencil sharper when one sharpens an O'BON pencil.  Colors, designs and swirls - all unique everytime you sharpen your O'BON.  
Make the change, use up your wood pencils and then help the environment, buy O'BON.  Then, have fun.

New O'BON Products

O'BON will be introducing a whole new line of office stationery.  These will include memo pads, notebooks, file folders, spiral notebooks (3 sizes) and 3 ring binders.  All will be made from recycled paper, recycled newspaper, water-based glue and vegetable ink.  Oh, and are they beautiful as we continue to follow our slogan, "Something Different."

We are about design

O'BON loves to design.  We put great effort into the design elements of our products and packaging.  For us, we want to be more than an advocate for the recycle/environmental movement, we also want to great great recycled products.  Quality must be first class, but our products must also look great.  This blog is dedicated to the look of our products and packaging. We seek you comment and your ideas.  Any pencil, pen, file folder or memo pads you would like to see us develop.   Let us know....

O'BON Photo Gallery