At Prodir we’re closing the circle on waste by regenerating that waste into new pens. All of our pens are now produced using 30% recycled plastic.
And one special range takes this commitment even further: the 100% recycled DS Regeneration line of writing instruments.
Waste not, want not.
Any manufacturing process generates waste. At Prodir, plastic waste can be the result of testing new colours in pen housings, recalibrating machines from one order to the next, producing samples, production waste from pen housings, and regular, predictable blips in production that quality control is quick to signal.
Production is efficient. “The goal of any serious company is to produce the best product with the least amount of waste,” Cecilia Cattaneo, the Prodir Colour Specialist, told me. “But we’ve been doing that for so long, we don’t have loads of excess waste to work with.”
By bits, pieces, and handfuls, all this waste still adds up.
And it’s the first necessary step towards Regeneration.
Once we collect this waste, we grind it up so we can use it again. While some companies make recycled products by gathering scrap from all over the world, we prefer to keep it in house. That means no diesel-burning trucks, no trains, and no container ships, moving waste all over the world.
Stockpiling waste.
Keeping your recycling in-house takes time – and storage space. “We’ve got to store it up, little by little, until we have enough to put it into production,” Cecilia told me. In addition to colours, Cecilia is also in charge of collecting, sorting and warehousing pen housing scrap while it awaits regeneration into new pen housings, from our classic models, with 30% recycled content, to the fully 100% recycled DS Regeneration Pens.
Regenerating new colours.
DS Regeneration pens are currently available in five colours: The first three are our classic Blue, Black and Fango, dark colours that, as you learned in painting class as a kid, are what you get when you mix your whole palette together with the paintbrush. Our most recent releases are Red and Green, vivid colours obtained not through the use of additional colouring, but through the careful and continuous sorting of waste.
Every company generates waste. But at Prodir, by regenerating it in-house, we’re creating more sustainable products that give new life to waste. Again and again and again.