The “Made from Newspaper” slogan might seem self-explanatory on the surface but it actually represents a deep commitment on the part of all of us here at O’BON to provide you with a superior, environmentally friendly product. Many of our products are completely or partly made from newspaper, including all of our pencils (art pencils, color pencils, included).

The advantages of this production process are as follows: When compared to producing wood pencils, the production process of making a newspaper pencil is much cleaner, leaving less left over waste. Our factory is low on the energy consumption scale of producing pencils. Unlike wood pencils, we have no trees to chop, no wood slates to grind and no hexagonal shape to cut by grinding wood.

Our main byproduct is essentially just newspaper particles. These particles are gathered and then filtered before being collected in a storage tank. The contents of tank are then spread throughout the gardens around our factory as mulch.

We are able to produce beautiful school and office supplies from post-consumer waste and old newspaper, instead of harvesting raw, natural materials. Essentially, we are finding a great use for materials that would otherwise be discarded.

The process of rolling newspaper around graphite instead of encasing it in wood means that the graphite is far better protected. In comparison, merely dropping a wood pencil on the floor can result in the graphite splintering and cracking. This is why we can confidently say that O’BON pencils often last 2-3 times longer than conventional wood pencils.

As you can see, there are many advantages to purchasing our environmentally friendly school and office supplies. At O’BON, “Made from Newspaper” is both a fact AND a reminder for us to uphold our own standard of producing beautiful, sturdy, and environmentally sustainable products.