Green Tip #73: Crayons

So, one of the trends that seems to be catching on in the environmentally friendly world of manufacturing is to make things out of organic materials. Which makes sense. Everyone knows where plants come from. Seeds get put into the ground and a few days, weeks or years later something grows and gives us fruits, vegetables, rubber, more seeds, money, clothing, spaghetti, hardwood floors, coffee, Snuggies, maple syrup, breakfast cereals, trail mix, books about 18th century French poetry, flowers and all other sorts of good things. But everything that's not a plant or an animal people have no idea where it comes from. Like who really knows where concrete comes from? Have you ever seen a concrete tree? Nope. So who's to say that we're not running out of concrete? We know we're running out of polar bears because we know where polar bears come from. Does anyone know where gas comes from? (other than Saudi Arabia) Nope. So we can't really know if we're running out of gas or not. We're just assuming that we are running out because it's more expensive.

So that got me thinking of stuff that we use every day and see if there's anything that we could replace with plant byproducts. And I have just the thing. Green Tip #73 is to replace graphite pencils with wax crayons. Have you ever seen where graphite comes from? Nope. Probably somewhere in the ground. Maybe Saudi Arabia. If I told you that Saudi Arabia was the country that produced the most graphite in the world, you'd probably believe me. So who's to say we're not running out of graphite?

Here's something we can't run out of: wax. Wax can sometimes be made synthetically, but it can also be made from beeswax or various oils made from plants. And you can turn wax into crayons. So from now on, cast out those pencils and their ambiguous origins! Start writing everything in crayons! Which reminds me, I think I'm going to go work on my Master's Thesis. And I'm going to do it in crayon, of course!