Donated Pens From Silver Spur Elementary
These pens came a couple of weeks ago from Merin D. a parent from Silver Spur Elementary School in Rancho Palos Verders, CA. Merin is also part of The Green Team an interactive educational program to help students and teachers to help the environment through waste reduction, reuse, recycling and composting. These are but a few of the pens she collected last year but Merin volunteered to incorporate collecting old pens at Silver Spur as part of her crayon and glue stick recycling program. Merin thank so much and may you be the first of many around the country who are willing to take the time to collect and send in their old pens for the million pen project.
O’Reilly Media Recycling Pens for the Pen Guy
O’Reilly Media Tarsier Sculpture by Patrick Amiot
Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid
O’Reilly Media just agreed to collect old pens for me the Pen Guy for my million pen project that I will be working on in the next 5-10 years. My plan is to collect millions of pens to create works of art that will then go on display at various locations around the country, and that’s just to start with. My other big goal is to begin exploring other pen possibilities in solving future problems such as affordable energy efficient housing. Would it be possible to build an entire house from recycled pens and markers or at least a big part of it??? Who knows what is possible right now, but we will never know unless someone starts asking questions.
Having O’Reilly Media on board with such big project is a big deal to me and an example to other business who might want to join in the Green Pen Revolution and help keep a few million pens out of the dump in the coming years. They collect old batteries and have a Goodwill donation drop off, why not pens? My contact within O’Reilly told me that she sent out a company wide email letting everyone know that old pens are now a wanted commodity by yours truly. I can’t wait to pickup my first batch of recycled pens. To all of you at O’Reilly Media thank you for dreaming big with me, because without dreamers the world would be a boring place.
Collect A Million Pens – Pen Guy’s plan for re-using pens
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.
Pens from Chicago
A big thank you goes out to the person from Chicago who sent all these pens last Tuesday. It’s nice to know that someone would take the time to mail a bunch of pens to some yahoo in California with a crazy pen covered mercedes.
Ballpoint Chandelier – 15 uses for old pens
The Ballpoint Chandelier is one of the coolest uses for BIC pens I have seen so far. I want one of these beauties hanging inside the Mercedes Pens. I probably should make my own mini chandelier, and I probably will. This image came from diylife along with another 14 really great ideas. I think the mercedes pens should have made the cut, but on my blog it has 🙂