Wednesday 21 January 2009

Going green

Well, after almost 2 months of inactivity here's a new review. I have plenty of pens to review, I just forget about it or don;t have time to do it.

This time is the Zebra Eco Sarasa Clip 0.7mm, I picked a 2-pack of these at Office Max during a sale they had last week, 25%off their eco products so I could not resist.

This pen is exactly the same as the Asian Sarasa Clip which you can get from JetPens (they now call it the Push Clip), the Sarasa Clip is not found at normal stores here in the US (not that I know of) but the Eco is. The main difference is that the Eco's clip is clear plastic as opposed to the clip of the Asian Clip which is the color of the ink. I feel it to be far more comfortable than the regular Sarasa, which is not bad at all, but the Clip is better.

The interesting part is this. According to their website, the Eco Sarasa is made of 81% post consumer waste, including Polypropylene (good, those grocery bags are filling up our landfills), Polycarbonate from CD's and headlamps and Polyacetal from cassette tape reels, plus the packaging that is 100% post consumer waste.

I feel that this is a good approach on becoming greener, of course, trying to get rid of things like paper magazines or newspapers is outrageous, but the idea of helping the environment using pens made of recyclable materials (which are already recycled) is good and not very expensive (unlike switching your 5.3L V8 Chevy Tahoe for a $45000 Hybrid Tahoe). Also remember that it takes a regular Sarasa cartridge so you can get a 0.4mm or 0.5mm cartridge from Jetpens and still be green enough. Uniball Signo and Pentel Energel / Hybrid Technica refills fit too (I did have a needle point Sarasa for a while)

The downside, it comes only in black, but hey, you can still put other cartridges in there. And the rubber grip tends to collect some lint.

The pictures will appear later since my camera is in my truck and I already feel the symptoms of sleep deprivation.