Monday, October 15, 2007

ECO-FRIENDLY WRITING WITH FOUNTAIN PENS

We may not realize it but some of our seemingly mundane activities actually cause harm to the environment. Take for instance, writing with a plastic ballpoint pen. No one would believe that writing with it actually damages the environment. If you are writing with a plastic ballpoint pen then you maybe doing more harm to the environment than you imagine. So, exactly how does your using a ballpoint to write with affect the environment?

To begin with, lets take a look at the commonly used plastic ballpoint pen. Everything about it, from top to bottom, is plastic. Only the tiny point at the end of the refill is metal. We all know plastic is bad for the environment because it is not biodegradable, cannot be recycled and remains in the environment for several years or maybe, forever. Besides being an environmental hazard, plastic also poses enormous risk to our health. When plastic is burnt it releases toxic fumes into the air that can cause cancer.

The magnitude of the threat to the environment these plastic ballpoint pens pose will be clear once we look at some figures. Almost every one who needs to write either at the office or in school uses a ballpoint pen. India's population is more than a billion and out of these millions, about 150 million are students at any given point of time, as per government estimates.

Assuming that an average student changes the refill in his ballpoint pen once a month it means twelve refills (or say ten refills) a year, all made of plastic. No student uses the same ballpoint pen all year- being made of plastic they break easily and are also easily misplaced or lost. We have to account for these breakages and losses, and the replacements.

Even if we assume that a student buys a new ballpoint pen every three months to replace those lost or broken, then it comes to four plastic ballpoint pens every year. It means a total of twelve plastic refills, four plastic ballpoint pens a year per student. Of course, the plastic packaging these refills and pens come in is a separate component itself. The wrapping may not weigh much but it is plastic nevertheless. This also gets added to the total plastic generated by just one student per year.


Even if we assume about 100 million out of the 150 million students use plastic ballpoint pens then we have something like a billion plastic ballpoint pens, ten billion refills and their plastic wrappers. Now imagine how much plastic that could be? A veritable sea of tons and tons of plastic which probably will remain in the soil for years and years causing serious and incalculable damage to our environment.

But all is not lost. There is an alternative to the plastic ballpoint pen. It is an alternative that has passed out of fashion long ago. It is the good old fountain pen. A fountain pen (made of ebonite or celluloid) generates zero plastic because it doesn’t use plastic at all. One good quality fountain pen lasts years so one can forget about a plastic fountain pen polluting the environment.

A common fountain pen uses only ink and not refills hence its other name- ink pen. Which means no plastic refills. The ink used to fill the fountain pen comes in glass bottles. The glass bottle comes in cardboard packing that can be recycled. The glass bottle itself can be recycled. However, some fountain pens use cartridge refills made of plastic. These are expensive anyway and students cannot afford them.

So using a fountain pen to write means no plastic ballpoint pen bodies, no plastic refills and no plastic wrappers either. These advantages make the good old fountain pen the perfect eco-friendly writing instrument of choice. Another advantages is that not only writing with a fountain pen is elegant, it is also cheap and convenient to use. A fountain pen needs little care and a few simple precautions are to be followed when using a fountain pen.

Clean the pen and nib assembly with tepid water once a month. Screw the cap tightly to prevent leakage of ink and accidental damage to the nib. Check the ink level regularly and carry a spare pen during examination time. Do not lend your fountain pens to others as nibs adapt to your writing angle and may get damaged if others write with it at a different angle. If possible, keep a piece of cloth in your desk or bag to wipe off any ink.

So, if you are really concerned about saving the environment, throw away your plastic ballpoint pen and go for a fountain pen today. It is the perfect zero-plastic solution for guilt-free writing.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Are you kidding me? This is so pointless.

Who the hell CARES about the environment? I know i don't. It's a pointless load of bull. We're all going to die so who the hell cares?

OKAY LETS ALL GO SPEND $100 ON A RETARDED FOUNTAIN PEN THAT'S GOING TO BREAK IN THE NEXT 5 MINUTES ANYWAYS AND WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO SPEND ANOTHER HUNDRED! WE CAN BUY REGULAR BALLPOINTS BUT WE'RE GOING TO SPEND 90 TIMES MORE THE MONEY SO WE CAN MAKE THE EARTH SMILE!!!

HIPPIES UNITE.

...yeah, okay. Help the environment. My ass.

RetypePassword said...

@bloody: If you get a fountain pen --- even a lower-end, $25 Lamy Safari, it will likely outlast you, and you probably won't lose it because of the cost of a single pen. Ask yourself how many ballpoints you've lost, and add up the costs to replace them. Fountain pens don't cost so much after all, now do they?

Vinod Ekbote: Don't tell your readers to throw away the ballpoint pen. Plastics can be recycled about eight times before they have to be thrown in a landfill; please change "throw away" to "recycle."