You’re probably right that I like to digress a lot but at the same time I think we can see a lot more of the world if we try to relate together seemingly unlike things. I say this because in the end there is a huge balance sheet behind everything that is manufactured but unfortunately we often miss it as it becomes buried under marketing, news media, and politics. For the most part, all we see is the finished product and the convenience or good vibe we get from it. One way around this is to look at parallel examples.

And as far as you getting bored… hmm… that’s an odd thing to say when you started off your comment telling me how you really enjoy reading my input. (??) I’m just happy to be here instead of somewhere else.

– Boris

I have a theory as to why this is – the pencil industry is likely too minor compared to other wood product users (paper, construction lumber, etc.) to warrant dedicated attention from environmental researchers.

The Timberlines blog did once mention (linked in the post) a study by Arthur D. Little (a management consultant) on some of these very issues.

As summarized, the study suggested that woodcase pencils are more environmentally friendly than recycled pencils in aspects such as consumption of water and energy, emission of suspended solids, solid waste creation, and hazardous waste creation.

Recycled pencils did better at raw material consumption, carbon monoxide emission, and organic pollutants.

(There were other categories in the study as well.)

The extensive discussion here was engaging. I’ve appreciated the amount of effort than has gone into some of these comments. The blog format doesn’t necessarily encourage lengthy statements, and I’d like to express my thanks to those who took the time to contribute.

I don’t know how much money is being collected through the tariff and it may warrant some investigation. If, as you said, it is some lucrative amount that is being collected and dispersed then you may just have to start a wooden pencil manufacturing business here in the US. Pick a state with low taxes and cheap land. Harvest the forest responsibly (like a good farmer with his fields of corn) and make a good quality alternative to the Dixon Ticonderoga. Price it somewhere between $0.14-$0.17 per pencil and find a way to get it on the shelves of a major retailer. Use that to start up your recycled paper based pencil manufacturing and price that somewhere around $0.22-$0.30. You’d still be way ahead in terms of pricing than where you are today.

Take a softer approach to the wooden pencil. After all, how much bashing of big SUVs do you hear from the Smart or Mini cars? Very little if any at all. They poke fun but that’s different. Humor usually works. Instead, they promote their best qualities (size and fuel economy) in some cute way and leave it at that. Otherwise, it starts a war like Ford vs. Chevy and that is never healthy. Also, be careful if the FTC decides to follow up on any negatively perceived claims coming from a newly subsidized business that receives all this wonderful money from tariffs!

Our company offers many industrial plant monitoring systems and methods. The industry has standards and expectations. We always try to offer something better than what is the norm and we always promote new technologies to our customers. However, if the customer really really really wants an old fashioned solution then we have to offer that too. If we didn’t offer it then we would have no credibility. It would seem like we are pushing our own solution not because it’s better but because we don’t have anything else. We would seemingly have a small portfolio and less knowledge of the industry. It would tarnish our image of being experts in the field.

Your recycled pencils would be made with local materials that were originally made using a cleaner process regulated by the EPA. Furthermore, your recycling process will also be cleaner due to the cleaner power used to operate your plant. I don’t know if you saw the latest news article about China’s greenhouse gases.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080403/pl_nm/usa_china_paulson_dc;_ylt=AlIDs2KftfvFjR00tO_lJW2s0NUE

Finally, there would be no transportation across the Pacific. I think you will be many steps ahead in terms of having a “greener” product.

Your wooden pencil could be innovative too if you can find some new method of responsibly harvesting the wood, working with conservation groups that replant forests (and touting it on your packaging), or find some new way to make the pencils faster, cheaper, and better. The break-less pencil? Perhaps a new graphite mixture? A ferrule-less wooden pencil? I don’t know. There’s tons of ideas out there.

Good luck!

I have to side with you on this one because I am not a huge fan of many protective tariffs. My company feels the same pain when it tries to export its products to the rest of world. We probably didn’t have much luck lobbying the foreign governments (communist, socialist, and otherwise) so we ended up opening factories and sites in those regions. Just think of the Japanese building Hondas and Toyotas in America. Some of our products and materials are actually built there and imported back to the US. None of them are super high tech – sheet metal, chassis, power supplies, etc. Many of our manufacturing personnel were very suspicious about this and they were afraid that their jobs were going to be outsourced with the products. It turns out that the outsourcing was a huge relief because it freed up resources previously dedicated to old tech products to work on new upcoming products. We even went as far as buying a major Chinese company and integrating it into our conglomerate. Who knows, maybe our American business practices and democratic ideals will trickle through the companies we deal with and slowly start some change in those dictatorship? Maybe it’s just wishful thinking…

As long as O’Bon’s products are legally manufactured, imported, and sold then there is no reason you should be dinged. Wooden pencil manufacturers should welcome the competition and match the creativity and ingenuity. Let the free market decide on the position and price of the product. Some manufacturers will rise to the challenge and others will sink.

I suppose your only two options are to lobby the politicians to change the law or to bring your manufacturing facilities over to the US and I’m sure you have probably investigated both options in depth. What are your thoughts on this?

It’s interesting that you tell me to give the paper manufacturing process example a rest because the O’Bon pencil is made of… paper. As consumers we see only the final product. We don’t get to see all the processes used to create the product. If we saw the processes used for things we buy then we would have completely different lifestyles. Think of how many more vegetarians would be around if people actually followed a cow from the field to the meat packing plant. Making paper is not a clean process and it certainly isn’t cleaner in China.

Perhaps one way to think of recycling products is this: would you erase a whole sheet of paper in order to save it and reuse it? If you do erase it then you can claim that you saved a piece of paper. However, along the way you burned through a whole eraser doing it. Did you really save anything? Or, did you end up spending more of something else to save a different thing? Was it worth burning through that eraser? That’s the only question and argument I am bringing up with the O’Bon.

One thing that seems to get little attention with wooden pencils is that they biodegrade beautifully no matter where they end up: in the dump, in a fire, or even on the floor. It’s not like a glass bottle or a tin can that will sit around for hundreds (thousands?) of years. So I say let the pencil shaving go to the landfill. Good luck trying to find them like you would a thrown away wrench.

Yes, for the most part, we all drive cars and I’m just as guilty as anyone for doing this. I try to do my bit by driving a Hyundai and I even traded in my Jeep for it. Additionally, I ride my bike to work at least two days a week. I only fill up my gas tank about once a month. You are totally right in that if people start switching over to more fuel efficient cars that the world be a cleaner place. Secretly, I hope gasoline keeps climbing in price. It would painful for the consumer but people respond much better to pain than rhetoric.

The Prius carries some controversy along with it’s fuel efficiency. Along with being green, a product needs to be economical. You need to consider the cost of ownership over 10 years, the cost per mile, and the total amount of pollution released during its lifetime. The Prius in many ways is not much more efficient or cleaner than a regular gasoline car. I say this because I average 42 MPG on my Hyundai which costs around $12k less than the Prius and the Honda Civic (which can get wonderful fuel economy if driven correctly) in general is an extremely clean burning car. Neither of these two gasoline cars have big nasty batteries that will one day wear out and require a huge effort to service. Unfortunately, many people compare the Prius to large SUVs like the Cadillace Escalade, Ford Expedition, and Dodge Durango. Almost anything on the market would be better than those huge land yachts.

Nobody really knows what we’re going to do with all the batteries once they wear out and can no longer effectively hold their charge. There will probably be some sort of recycling program but that’s just another process that will require more energy. Unless it runs on something like solar, get ready to see some more pollution coming from those coal burning plants to run the process while still trying to keep up with the world insatiable appetite for energy.

Hybrids are a great idea and we’re learning a lot through building them and using them but to me it’s another example of making a statement more than making an impact. There are cheaper and easier ways to make the same statement without shelling out $24k: slowing down, driving less, working from home, and car pooling are just a few. Things are slowly changing and it will probably take a generation of people before we can look back far enough to see how far we have come.

In a capitalist society, we are free to spend our money on what we believe in at a price that in the end we agree with. If you think that the O’Bon pencil is great for the statement it makes, for the process used to produce it, and for its overall attractiveness then that is fantastic. You should indeed support the company through your purchases. It keeps the economy moving. Seriously. All I am saying is that I personally don’t believe it, I don’t agree with the price ($0.50 each + S&H), and I question/doubt the validity of their claims. That’s all. If someone gifted me the pencils it’s not like I would throw them away or get an upset stomach.

Seriously, to truly eliminate waste in a pencil sense, we should simply switch over to mechanical pencils and take care of them for 10-15 years. That could be a “significant step” as addressed by ProudOBONConsumer and Senator Kerry. Gone would be the trillions of wooden pencils produced every year around the world. Yet, here we are…

So yes, the debate will continue in more areas than just O’Bon’s pencils. :-)