Whether we’re drooling over pencil push up pops or obsessing over finding the world’s greatest pen, there’s just something about back-to-school season that makes us swoon over new office supplies. Lucky for us, our notebooks have just gotten a little more tech-savvy. Now we think it’s time our pencils follow suit. These 5 innovations will take your doodling to a whole new level.
Sprout: It’s always struck us as super wasteful to throw out the unusable, inch-long stub that you get after sharpening the same pencil over and over again. This new Kickstarter project transforms that previously useless object into new life. With a seed in the base, this pencil is ready to be planted as soon as it’s too short to write with. Instead of feeling guilty about wasting resources, you can happily partake in freshly grown tomatoes or herbs. (And the pencil nub doubles as a plant marker, so you can have a perfectly organized desktop garden!)
Pencil Printer: Speaking of pencil nubs, this concept printer is designed to let you use every bit of graphite and eraser from your pencils. Rather than using decidedly environmentally-unfriendly disposable ink cartridges, just supply the printer with your pencil stubs and it will harvest the graphite as ink… and even use the leftover bits of eraser to allow you to quickly and easily erase your printed material. We can’t wait until this one’s available for purchase!
Office Waste Paper Processor: We’re huge fans of recycling office supplies. Although we try to be conscious of using less, we inevitably end up with scrap paper that we can’t seem to find another use for. This insanely cool product reuses old paper along with inputs of pencil lead and glue to create new and unique pencils.
Shorty Mechanical Pencil: Nothing’s more frustrating than being in the middle of an epic brainstorming session when your pencil breaks and there isn’t a sharpener in sight. This self-sharpening pencil helps you keep your thoughts flowing without annoying, lead-related interruptions. And because it’s ergonomic, your hand won’t even cramp up during your idea-jotting marathon.
Pencil/Pen/Highlighter/Stylus: Remember when you were in middle school and carried around a pencil pouch stocked with every type of pen, pencil, and marker you could imagine? Well, this is the grown-up version of that. In a single, streamlined product, you get a pencil, pen, highlighter, stylus, and ruler. You can be prepared for any creativity-based emergency, without having to lug around your whole desk.
What office supplies can you not live without? Have you found any cool office-based tech innovations we need to know about? Talk to us in the comments below or over on Twitter.
