Saturday, September 15th, 2007
Green School Supplies
School has started for my 4th grader. I tried to be an environmentally-friendly school supply shopper, but it proved to be a little difficult at times. I could not, for the life of me, find wide-lined notebook paper or pronged 2-pocket folders with recycled paper content, so I was forced to purchase (gasp!) virgin paper. Another disappointment was the discontinuance of the Prang(C) soybean crayons (made with no petroleum products), so again, I was forced to go the environmentally-unfriendly route (i.e., Crayola(R)).
On the bright side, I did find spiral notebooks and Post-it(R) notes with recycled paper content. In addition, a number of supplies we kept from previous years followed the “reuse” point on the reduce-reuse-recycle triangle. These included: the plastic box for holding supplies (this has been in circulation for five years now), last year’s bottle of liquid glue, scissors, ruler, still good pens and #2 pencils, and, of course, the trusty old backpack.
As for lunches, a new lunch box was required because the old one was falling apart, but at least we don’t use disposable paper sacks. We also avoid plastic baggies by reusing old sour cream containers to put things in like grapes, trail mix, and Goldfish(R).
All in all, I think I did fairly well in finding environmentally-friendly school supplies, considering the market. Hopefully, more consumers will start demanding “green” school supplies, and in turn, the manufacturers will start producing them. My fingers are crossed…
