O'BON LLC recently imported its first container of pencils into the USA. They had to pay 114% duty on the recycled pencils. This is to stop "dumping." The money paid to customs for "dumping" goes directly to support the pencil industry in the USA. This would all be understandable if "dumping" was involved and, more importantly, there was a recycled pencil industry effected by the "dumping." Bare with me on my logic.
O'BON imports recycled newspaper pencils and the 114% tax goes to support the USA wood pencil industry. Excuse me, where is the logic in this? Cutting down trees to make pencils, to us, is a bad use of our limited resources and the wood cutting industry plays a big part in global warming through deforestation. Wood pencils are part of this problem. So, for O'BON to simply give this money to wood pencil manufacturers seems unfair and unjust. Our concept, technology and innovation supports an old, outdated and global warming industry. The energy consumed and the footprint size of wood pencil manufacturers is big. Frankly, O'BON is appalled and seeks any advice out of this situation. Giving our money to wood pencil manufacturers is painful for us.
If our money went to the recycled newspaper pencil business in the USA, this would be tolerable, but to support wood cutting and deforestation is beyond acceptable. Any ideas?
7 comments:
Manufacture them here in the U.S.; then simultaneously you could: Create jobs here, improve the economy by putting the salaries paid into the hands of U.S. citizens all while avoiding the import/"dumping" tariff. Pretty simple actually.
We have every intention of manufacturing in the US....but you miss the point. What danger does a recycled newspaper pencil pose to a wood based pencil. Different completely. At lot of people don't understand this, but the technology of this is from China, not the USA. Also, we have a very serious about the environment and since our manufacturing is there, we have expanded in Asia first. We are big in Japan, Australia, Malaysia, Thailand and of course China.
Therefore to manufacture in the US requires a foothold into the market so it is economically and environmentally feasible to produce these lovely pencils in the USA. But, don't you see the irony of a recycled, environmental company actually supporting a destroy the trees to make a wood pencil company. Seems sad to me.
ya bring in pencils from china using slave labour and make lots of cash. thats the real american way isnt it? exploit the masses with lies.
Thank you for your comment...We are an ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 company. It would seem unfair of you to accuse without the facts. Many Americans assume that all companies in China have slave or child labor and all US companies are great. While there are way too many exploitative companies in China and the US, it is naive to see China as the center of the evil empire.
I will be doing a posting soon to describe our company and workers' conditions.
honestly iso in china is a joke. lets be honest here and upfront, iso is a title in a system that quality wise is unstable. all those lead toys came from iso companies. but hell we wouldnt have socks for 1$ if they werent made by disenfranchised persons
I think there are several positive points about woodcase pencils that you don't seem to know.
First of all is that EU and US pencil producers (so not the ones that sell pencils made in china, but the reall EU/US producers) are actual planting more forests than they'll need. In fact they are often producing diverse forests just for the sake of the environment.
Second is that paper making is quite a nasty business, even certainly recycled paper as well. Recycling is on its self a good business, but what do you use for glueing the paper to the lead and glueing the paper to the next layer? And you'll need to finish the pencil as well with some kind of lacquer.
More importantly is that I wander where you get your paper from. You can't use the recycled paper that I make, most of it is shredded.
So you need to use rolls of misprints etc. But these supplies are varying greatly, both in quality and in used paper/printing and also in availability.
Don't misunderstand me, I like a good new product, and I welcome every bit of better waste management/ recycling. But all to often I see recycled products being tagged with environmentally better, zero pollution, etc. etc. when in fact they are using some very nasty chemicals for the process, use up enormous amounts of energy and in extreme cases are even more polluting than the not recycled product.
So please go on and produce the pencils in Europe and/or the US and rest assured that I will buy them.
Because I don't see any reason to have a highly automated production process in China, other than for environmental issues. Paper recycling is enormous in the Netherlands, hardly any paper is wasted, most of it is recycled, so there is more than enough paper to make your pencils.
thanks for your comments. I'm not sure where to begin.
I am not in love with wood pencils period. My concern is that I really am not a fan of "sustainable forests." Granted, they are better than the virgin rainforests or other forests destroyed to make newspaper, photocopy paper or pencils. These folks are criminals. But too often, sustainable forests are created by destroying a forest to create a sustainable forest. This has already been done in Malaysia, Thailand, China and Brazil - where a lot of newspaper and pencils come from. This is not good to say it mildly.
I am big on biodiversity and when you cut down a diverse forest, to create acres and acres of one specie tree forest, you have effectively eliminated biodiversity. These forests are weak and provide little for the environment. Yes, they are better than a rainforest, but these so called "sustainable forests" are often a poor substitute to a real forest.
Second, recycled newspaper or paper is often uses a lot of resources, pollute and in other real ways create a big footprint. Not good.
Our pencils use sheets of newsprint paper. We use water-based, non-toxic glue when we wrap them. This hardens when dry into a sturdy pencil. We do paint them, but you can hardly criticize this as "aren't wood pencils painted." You can go to www.buygreen.com and see an independent study on our non-toxic pencils. You will be impressed.
When you measure the footprint of a wood pencil compared to our newspaper pencil, you cannot possible think that there is not an ecological advantage.
Some people make the logical mistake of adding or computing the newspaper as a part of O'BON manufacturing process....this is not right. We are using, actually recycling newspaper - the paper has already been used. This is what recycling is all about.
Finally, it is worth remembering that wood pencils are from trees and are manufactured in a process that includes saws and grinders that have a heavy footprint. We take an old, used newspaper and make a pencil in a clean ISO factory with an incredibly low footprint. There is no comparison - O'BON stands out as the clear footprint winner compared to wood pencils.
Also, please note we manufacture is China as this is where the process of making these pencils was invented and this is where our main client base is. When we are big enough in the US, we will bring this technology to the US. We hope within the next two years.
Post a Comment