Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Flickr and O'BON

O'BON USA has created a visual display of each O'BON product. Help yourself and enjoy the wonder of these products. Get it here.

Friday, October 17, 2008

Link with us!

                                    
Eco-Friendly Stationery                                
                                        

Eco-Friendly Stationery


LINK TO US!
1) Copy the code from the boxes below the image (or images)
2) Then, go onto your website/blog and paste it.
3) The flash image should appear on your website!
4) Need help? Drop me a comment.

If you want us to link with you please send me your link or website!

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Eco-Friendly Office Paper: It's new from O'BON!


We have announced that O'BON is using SugarCane Paper in all our notebooks. This may need some explanation to all our O'BON fans. Why SugarCane Paper? First, when we looked at recycled paper, we were not too impressed with most of it. For example, recycled paper tends to either be brownish and with "threads" embedded. When we looked carefully at the "whiter" paper, we discovered that of this type recycled paper only had a 40% recycled content. This was just too low for us.
As we acknowledge that our SugarCane paper is not recycled paper, it is 86% sugarcane. This leaves a small percentage of actual wood in our paper. Furthermore, given the nature of sugarcane, it is so much easier to make sugarcane paper than wood paper or recycled paper. Many of you know that the paper industry collectively is the 3rd biggest pollution on our planet. So, O'BON really wanted to look for "something different." We think the solution to the paper pollution large footprints is looking at alternatives to the wood paper industry. So much energy and pollution is caused by this business, we need desperately to find solutions.
The wood paper industry destroys huge tracks of forest and rainforest. Moreover, the amount of energy to grind it down to pulp is fantastic. It made sense to us to look at sugarcane as an alternative.
Sugarcane is a plant that grows in the tropics and semi-tropics. It grows quickly in clumps. It does not require heavy doses of fertizers to make it grow quickly. It is more like a weed. It just grows and grows. Two or three "harvests" can be taken each year from this fast growing plant.
The sugarcane is very fiborous and sweet juice is extracted easily with a simple press. Once the juice is extracted, it is usually thrown away. So, why not put it on a truck or ship and take it to a paper mill?  Here, the already stripped plant can be made into the pulp necessary to make our sugarcane paper. No big saws or gigantic grinders are necessary for sugarcane pulp paper.

Join us in embracing this type of paper for your office or school printing needs. We call our sugarcane paper: L'Papier d'eco.  This paper comes in 80 grams with 500 sheets in one packet. Look for this soon at eco-friendly shops and web outlets.


This is a nice photo of our coloured pencils.   It is on a great Australian eco-friendly web site
at www.eco-essentials.com.au.  Check them out
This site describes O'BON pencil as:

O'BON Wildlife Colour Pencils(12)

Our Price: $8.50
Material: made from recycled newspaper

O'BON create products that protect our world and are exciting to use!
Each pencil is made from old newspaper using a patented roll-on method that ensures the lead in the pencil does not break easily.
Its quality is proven to last two to three times longer than ordinary wooden pencils. Manufacturer is ISO 9001 certified.
O'BON pencils are completely non-toxic, and carry an European EN-71 certification. They even use a non-toxic, water based glue, which is the safest and best alternative for products used by children.
These pencils are water resistant, easily sharpened and splinter free
No forest was destroyed to create O'BON pencil!
An Australian site has started selling our pencils....www.ecobabe.com.au.  Actually O'BON has a lot of websites discussing, selling, studying, analyzing, recommending O'BON in Australia.  We are just delighted.  We will show you some...this one....www.ecobabe.com.au

Product Information
Gone are the days when pencils came in bland colours, broke constantly and consumed valuable environmental resources. O'BON pencils are made from old newspaper, and manufactured in a variety of hip designs and colours.

We have lovely 2B lead pencils that are just soft enough to write smoothly and the funky coloured pencils where each colour matches the skin, fur or shell of one of the featured animals. The colours are rich, smooth and not waxy - key qualities of a superior pencil. These pencils make great gifts and will inspire kids to draw and colour.

Available as:
2 pack of 2B lead pencils $2.75
10 pack of 2B lead pencils $7.50
12 pack of coloured pencils $10.95


O'BON Pencils are

* quality, recycled newspaper pencils
* non-toxic, meets European Standards (EN-71)
* 100% environmentally friendly and saves our forest
* made from recycled newspaper using patented 'Rolled On' method
* water resistant and last 2-3 times longer than ordinary wood pencils
* well protected so that the lead doesn't break easily
* easily sharpened and splinter free

Pencil me In.....

www.ozolife.com has a nice picture of an O'BON pencil and an endorsement.  Thank you, we like your eco friendly site, lots of info.



Pencil Me In
O'Bon Pencils and Notebooks

How do you know you're officially an adult? When the smell of new folders and crowded school supply aisles stop evoking a bittersweet thrill. But here's something worth stuffing in the millennial generation's backpacks: woodless pencils from SF-based company O'Bon, which bypass the whole deforestation thing by wrapping the pencils' graphite 36 times in used newspaper. And the best way to embarrass text-happy kids who are too cool for school? Leave 'em an unabashadly mushy lunchbox note on bagasse paper (sugarcane pulp after it's been juiced) from an O'Bon notebook.


Available online at myobon.com.

School Down The Lane

The blog SCHOOLDOWNTHELANE has a comment up about O'BON pencils.  As more people learn about us, the endorsement come.  We especially like beating out the much like Black Warrior pencil...but that is a tree pencils.  But, O'BON beats it hands down.  Here are the comments from schooldownthe lane.

You might have noticed that I do not have pencils anywhere on our list of purchased products. There is a reason for that. In the past I have been a proponent of Mirado Black Warrior pencils. They are, in my humble opinion, the best pencil you can buy at the mega mart and I still love them. However (there is always an however isn’t there) last winter I bought K some O’BON pencils for her Christmas stocking and we are now thoroughly hooked. These are seriously the best pencils ever! They don’t break inside so when you sharpen them the lead falls out and you have to sharpen them again. They sharpen without loosing a ton of length. They feel better in your hand then wooden pencils and the dogs won’t even chew them since they are made of paper. That last bit is very important in this house as I have list more pencils to the dogs then anything else. The O’BON pencils are not cheap, but totally worth it if you can swing it. The three packages I bought last winter are hardly broken into since a pencil lasts so long and the art pencils are almost as long as when we got them despite being used constantly. The only thing is you have to buy erasers for them since they don’t have any. Not a big deal since the ones on the wooden pencils usually don’t work for squat anyway in my experience (possible exception being the erasers on the Black Warriors).

And yes, I think a lot about pencils.

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Sugarcane Paper Notebook (A Must Have)


We are so excited about our new range of A5 and A6 sugarcane paper notebooks.  The paper is called bagasse and it comes from the pulp of the sugarcane plant.  Once the juice is extracted, we can make nice clean white paper without destroying trees.  Cool!  What makes these notebooks so enjoyable and a must item to purchase is the hard cover...Take a look.  We have 15 designs. Here is one...recognize the bird?
We will have them for sale soon here.

Monday, March 10, 2008

Quick Note: Meet us in Las Vegas

O'BON USA will be one of the Green Exhibitor at the EarthNowExpo
on June 4 and 5.  If you would like to join the O'BON family, we will
be there to discuss how you can join us.  Specifically, we are looking
for those who wish to be regional distributors in the USA or wish 
to be wholesalers or distributors.  

John Davis will be there also to discuss sole distributorship for
Europe and Latin America.These are our main target markets for 
2008 and 2009, so if you have an interest this would be a good time 
to meet up.

We will carry a full range of our products for all to see including the
new binders andsugarcane paper notebooks.

So, come to Las Vegas in June.  More info at www.earthnowexpo.com

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Sugarcane Paper - Bagasse


O'BON now offers A5 and A6 notebooks.  These have great designs including our fruit and wildlife series art.  They are extremely attractive, and these notebooks are receiving rave reviews.  Orders are extremely good.  But, what I wanted to mention about these notebooks is our paper.
The paper is not recycled, but rather comes from the pulp and fiber of sugarcane.  This is called bagasse.  Many environmentalists know this word and know about this paper.  For others, bagasse might be a new word.  Bagasse is the byproduct left over when sugarcane juice is extracted from the sugarcane plant.  The leftover fiber is easily converted to paper.
So, our bagasse notebooks fall under the reuse and not the recycle idea of the 3Rs. From an eco-friendly standpoint, bagasse is great.  So little energy is required to grow sugarcane and to turn the pulp into paper.  Less energy, less pollution, no toxic chlorine to whiten the paper - sounds great doesn't it?  You can go here to learn more about bagasse and its wonderful qualities.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

A pencil that doesn't break....WOW!

Many pencil users are in disbelief about O'BON claiming that our pencils don't break.  Now, we are not saying that they never break, but it is damn hard to break the lead in an O'BON pencil.  We ask you to do the SMASH test.
The SMASH test involves taking a sharpened O'BON pencil and a wood pencil in one hand.  Make sure they are sharpened.  Then smash both the pencils on the edge of a table.  Don't hit the point, but the body of the pencil.  Smash it repeatedly - hard.  I mean hard.  Now wiggle the point.  Still intact, probably both pencils seem to be ok.  Now sharpen them.
Test Results:
The O'BON pencil lead is not cracked and works fine.  The other pencil lead is cracked and the point wiggles and easily come out when pulled.

How is this possible?
Many think that the O'BON doesn't break because it is cushioned by the newspaper.  This is not the correct answer.  The O'BON pencil is made by wrapping old newspaper 36 times around the graphite.  The graphite is sealed in - airtight.  There is no air gap inside, so when the pencil is smashed on the table or drops on the floor, there is no vibration inside the barrel.  Wood pencils are made with two slates of wood, grooved for the lead and glued together.  There is always an air gap - an air grap allows vibration inside the pencil against the fragile graphite.  So, snap, crackle, pop!
Another reason why we claim our pencils are "the world's greatest pencil."   

Sunday, February 24, 2008

Say "NO" to Wood Pencils

There is an interesting article and ever more interesting comments over at www.penciltalk.org.  This article springs from an article about O'BON in the San Francisco State University newspaper about O'BON.  You can read this here.  Based on the comments created at penciltalk, I thought it best to way in on the comments.  As O'BON is relatively new, many don't know much about us yet.  Patience, once they have tried one, they will learn about our many great qualities.
Comments I gave.

I really like this discussion and particularly the article and the comments from Boris. All make for an interesting read.
Please know that the Chinese are the inventor of this process; therefore, this is the reason that the process is not yet in the US. Second, there are a lot of - I mean - a lot of not good recycled newspaper pencils being made in China. O'BON is the biggest and the only one with both ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certification. Our factory is clean and extremely mindful of the environment. Our byproduct is a newspaper particles produced by grinding the rough edges. This is sucked up and filtered in a tank. The contents of which are put in our garden as mulch. Cool.
Our factory is extremely low on the energy consumption scale in producing pencils. Unlike wood penclis, we have no trees to chop, no wood slates to grind, no hexagonal shapes to made by grinding the woods. Also notice we use no ferrel aluminium - trying to reduce our footprint. We would love to have a discussion about our factory and energy production, waster, impact compared to the wood pencil producers. This is a comparison our plant will win hands down.
People who have used recycled newspaper pencils have come away unhappy doesn't surprise us. Most of the factories producing these pencils are rip offs. Be careful, but O'BON is a brand. As a brand, we are here to stay and are committed to improving our product. We do this by listening to all complaints and especially enjoy engaging in these kinds of debates. O'BON is completely non toxic - we have EN-71 certification (kid toy safe cert) while others will not as they are not a brand.
The issue of whether we are eco-friendly as newspaper comes from trees is an interesting argument. We would contend that the large pencil companies have invested huge amounts of money and resources in reducing bio-diverse forests to produce their sustainable forests. These forests are huge and often primary forest are cut to produce them. This has happened in Brazil, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Phillipines. This maddens me as to tear down a primary forest to create a sustainable forest - and then claim that you are environmental is deception at best. O'BON strives to reduce these sustainable forests and eliminate the practice of making pencils from trees. To us, it seems so old fashioned as there is better technology to make a pencil.
I save the best for last: Why are our pencils better than wood pencils. Some people seem to be incredulous about our claim of lasting 3 times longer. How is this possible? The graphite is the same, the length is the same, what are blatant lie you may think. Let me explain.
Unlike wood pencils which are made by gluing two slates of wood together, O'BON uses newspaper, wrapped tightly. Wood pencil slates are grooved to hold the graphite and then glued tight. There is almost always air gaps in this process. So, as every young student learns, wood pencil graphite easily breaks when dropped. Often it shatters all the way up to the eraser. So when you sharpen such a pencil, the graphite is cracked resulting in breakage. This is so frustrating and an extremely common event. Just ask any child.
Now, take our O'BON pencils. Smash it on the desk. I mean really smash it, over and over and over. Now sharpen it. Wow, not broken. Try this experiment with any wood pencil. In our road shows and exhibition we love to invite people to drop or smash our pencils - they just don't break. Audiences are amazed. (Other recycled newspaper pencils will withstand this punishment, but O'BON pencils will. So, with our superior manufacturing technique - and our exclusive tight roll-on method, our graphite will not crack. Don't believe, buy a box and try it. Now if you snap the pencil in two, the graphite will break as well...Duh!
It is this fact regarding our non-breakable graphite (when pencil is dropped or snapped) that leads us to our claim of lasting longer than wood pencil. We stand by our claim and ask you to investigate.