Thrifty is the New Green for Back to School Supplies

by Green Talk on September 2, 2008

in children, education, household products

Some call me frugal. Others would call me cheap. I prefer the term practical and thrifty. Take for example buying school supplies. I can’t conceive of buying all brand new school supplies when my cabinets could double as my own Staples stores. Every time you go to buy supplies, they come in packages. If your child needs only one or two of a certain item, what do you do with the rest? You store it somewhere.

How many of you have on your child’s list, a 200 page composition or spiral notebook? Think back to the end of the year. Did your child remotely finish that book or notebook? From my experience, perhaps my kids have finished 1/2 or a 1/3rd of the book. Generally, they are always in good shape with a little bent corner here and there.

So I ask all of you, why do you have to buy brand new ones when your old ones still have some life to them? But you ask, what about all the pages with writing on them? I rip out the used pages, and recycle the pages. I then clean up the raw edges, and wa la, someone in the family can reuse the notebook for another year. I just put a new sticker on the front if it is someone else’s binder. My kids don’t care.

How about the volumes of crayons and color pencils you have to buy every year? I bet if you were to gather all the colored pencils and crayons you have, you would realize you have a pack or two of each!

Usually after scouring all the cabinets for supplies, I only have to buy binders since the plastic coated ones look like trash by the end of the year. I keep the ones that are lightly torn up. I reuse them for storing my papers or magazine articles that I swear that I will read again. (PS, they are collecting dust somewhere…)

This years school outing was a little different since I went looking for environmentally friendly products. More and more such products are appearing on the market. This year, I was bound and determined to practice what I preach and buy the Terracycle cardboard binders. My experience is the plastic coated binders do not hold up. By mid-year, they look like they have been through the war. We usually tear apart the sad dogged eared binders and recycle the cardboard. The rest unfortuneately, go in the trash. With four kids and multiple subject binders, I felt like I was single handily contributing to a massive landfill issue. It just makes me sick to see all that plastic waste. And what about the steel rings? I am just not that clever to think of another way to reuse the rings? Any suggestions, readers?

Well I truck to my nearest Office Max which is an hour away since the binders were not online. I was a little annoyed to say the least. (Not too environmentally friendly since I just wasted a lot of gas to avoid the plastic landfill issues.)

I have to admit they are pretty sturdy but I bought a bunch of box socks to cover the binders to protect them. Guess what? They don’t fit. Plus, there are stickers along the side and on the front of the binders which you must gently peel off; otherwise, the paper comes off too. No high schooler is going to want a Terracycle Eco Binder sticker staring them in the face unless they are a professed treehugger.

I did have to buy some plastic binders since the Office Max store did not have all the sizes I needed. I bought Ecovue recycled content plastic binders. Again, what am I going to do with the plastic part when the binder falls apart?

As for the other items such as pens and pencils, I was a little frustrated. I could not find sustainable pencils although OfficeMax offered them online but not in the stores. I could not find recycled content pens either. (Remember, I am in NJ so perhaps other stores offer these products.)

I decide to dip in my pen collection which is voluminous from all the pens I have received over the years. (How many pens do you pick up when you go to the bank?)

So, how have you been able to be thrifty in buying school supplies?

Photo courtesy of evelynishere