Collect A Million Pens – Pen Guy’s plan for re-using pens


Recycled Felt Tip Marker Bag

In the past three and half years I have managed to collect over 10,000 pens that I glued on my Mercedes Pens Art Car and people ask, “now what?” So far I have not found anyone out there who has a better solution for the millions of pens that end up in the land fill each year. There was a recent article called Refillable vs disposable pens written by Michael Bloch that addressed this problem and according to his article the number of disposable pens used each year in the USA is a staggering 106 billion. He concludes by mentioning that the “Pen Guy” yours truly, is the only one out there re-using and recycling pens. If I am the only solution out there then why not kick it up a notch by collecting a million pens and then make stuff out of them. I have a journal full of ideas, pen art, pen sculpture, pen furniture, pen jungle gyms, and my favorite “Pentopia” a road side attraction to house all my pen creations.

Whether its the ball point pen, the marker, the dry erase, the felt tip, what ever you call it, the boring pen to the fancy pen, I want to fill an entire warehouse and then spend the next twenty years figuring out and making beautiful things with them. How about a house built entirely from old pens? Insulation made from the crayola foam part that holds the ink? what of clothing died with ink extracted from old pens? what of pillows filled with pen springs? An article written by DIY life called 15 uses for old pens is another 15 ideas I found thus far but we need more.

The One Million Pen Project starts today, so collect your old pens and send them in.