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The Stationery and Ofﬁce Products Show (SOPX) held in April at the Business Design Centre, Islington underlined the importance of offering sustainable alternatives to traditional stationery products.

It is a measure of the impact that sustainable procurement is having on stationery purchases that almost every supplier at SOPX now includes recycled or biodegradable options within its portfolio. These are more than just ‘me-too’ products, but are a key element of manufacturers’ line-ups and the focus of continued investment and development by suppliers.

Zebra, for example, is re-branding its Care for Nature pens made from recycled plastic. Now known as ‘Eco Pens’, the expanded range of writing instruments is being promoted on a re-designed website.

Bic, too, has a line of recycled writing instruments. Its recently launched Ecolutions range includes products with a minimum of 50% recycled material, predominantly pre-consumer waste from the manufacturing process. Unlike the recycled pen ranges of other manufacturers that tend to

feature the same designs as standard products, Bic ecolutions pens have an unadorned, basic design. The only exceptions are the Bic ecolutions Orange and Tipp-Ex products that look the same as standard Bic products. Although not included in the ecolutions range, the latest Tipp-Ex launch, the Easy Reﬁll, is more environmentally friendly than some other products in the correction range, as it can be reﬁlled.

Remarkable Pens has been creating stationery products from recycled post-consumer materials longer than most. It has recently taken advantage of the greater availability of rPET plastic from recycled plastic drinks bottles to produce bendy plastic rulers

recycled notepads. Later this year, it will be launching geometry sets made from recycled car headlights. Filing is an obvious area for more sustainable options – indeed manilla ﬁles and folders have had a high recycled content for years. Today, there are greener options to suit all ﬁling needs.

Herlitz was showing a green version of its wide-opening One Tip lever arch ﬁle, which opens at the press of a button and allows ﬁles to be inserted on either side of the mechanism. The Blue-Angel certiﬁed model uses recycled paper and board and is non-laminated for simple recycling at end of life.

The ﬁling specialist also unveiled the Herlitz Green range of 100% recycled, Blue Angel-certiﬁed notebooks, pads, ﬁles and document wallets.

Sinclairs, famous for its Silvine brand, launched a 100% recycled range that is also FSC-certiﬁed and soon to be made carbon neutral. Despite the ‘Made with Care in the UK’ tagline, these notepads use M-real’s Evolve 100% recycled paper, which is now made at the Alizay mill in Northern France, albeit from recycled ﬁbre made in Kent from UK waste: the notebooks themselves are made inWest Yorkshire.

Any marketing department worth its salt will look for a green angle with which to promote its products. Typical is Mark C Brown, which is advertising the environmental beneﬁts of its new security dye stamp. The stamp uses a complex pattern to make sensitive details unreadable and therefore safe to put in the recycling bin. Small businesses and home users might ﬁnd this an attractive alternative to shredding, especially if their local

collect shredded paper for recycling. Philips is committed to reducing the environmental impact of its own products and has set up a labelling programme to help consumers choose

its most sustainable models. On the business machine front, it has a number of sustainable options with reduced packaging and cost/waste-saving features, including inkjet faxes that consume 40% less energy and laser MFPs with toner save mode to reduce toner consumption by 40%.