Eco-entrepreneur uses recycled paper to make affordable pencils
Imagine a pencil that could grow into a sapling after you discard it. Or a pencil made of old newspapers, actually water-resistant. Yes, they are real, and available.
G. Pramod Kumar, an MBA-turned entrepreneur set up Samiksha Enterprises and makes Rainbow Paper Pencils. The idea was born after a reflection on the philosophy of pencils, and a desire to start his own business. Help came from his cousin a machine manufacturer in Mumbai. Now his unit adds to the rhythmic click-clack in the weavers' colony at Nelapatla village here.
The pencils that Mr. Kumar makes have only eco-friendly, natural ingredients – gum, newsprint paper and lead. Moreover, the equipment used is as mundane as the ingredients - pencil roller, polisher and cutter.
Probably a first in Telangana, Mr. Kumar says, four 7-inch paper pencils can be produced from a centre-spread of a newspaper. And about 12 kg old newspapers, or a below 50 gsm (grams per square metre, indicating the lightness or heaviness of the paper) writing and printing paper could produce 2,400 pencils. That is the equivalent to a whole tree's production when chopped down. Rainbow Paper Pencils are priced between Rs. 5 and Rs. 10 each for a wide range including newspaper pencils, white and rainbow coloured pencils, velvet-finished and plantable seed pencils. ....Read more
Source web page: The hindu
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