Athi River, Machakos County-based MOMO Pencils discovered a practical solution to lessen the amount of trees cut down each year to produce ordinary writing pencils.
Brothers Mahamud and Rashid Omari, who run the business, buy their raw materials—in this case, glue and old newspapers—locally. The graphite is currently imported.
CEO Mahamud Omari claims that they paid just KSH 70 ($0.70) to KSH 100 ($1) per kilogramme for the used newspapers.
According to him, the cost of the finished product varies depending on quality and quantity, but it typically costs between KSH 15 and KSH 50 per pencil.
Pencils are a necessary component of life; they are employed in schools, for sketching, and for drawing.
According to the United Nations, eight million trees are felled each year to create pencils, which adds to deforestation.
Come up with a practical method to lower the amount of trees harvested annually to create basic writing pencils.
“If you look at the present day, we are suffering from climate action and the best way is to reduce the number of trees that are cut for any purpose,” he says.
“So, for that matter, 82,000 trees that are cut every year to make pencils, we provide an alternative. We take the newspaper and turn it into a viable product which is a pencil, providing an option for those people to use instead of wooden pencils.”
The gathering of newspapers is the first step in the pencil-making process.
The newspapers are precisely cut to size, and the pieces are then covered in graphite adhesive.
The newspaper scraps and graphite are then placed in a roller, where they are compressed and rolled into pencils.
After that, they are dried off in the sun for three days.
They are then sharpened and wrapped before being placed into a final compressor.
According to Mahamud, the company wants to guarantee that every youngster in Kenya uses its pencils within the next five years.
“We want each and every child in Kenya who goes to school to use our pencils and at the same time, be able to plant a tree through our pencil. That way we will reduce the number of trees cut,” he says.
“We will also provide an option and reduce the number of wooden pencils in the market.”
As a result of these initiatives, according to sustainability consultant and climate change specialist Nickson Otieno, fewer trees will need to be cut down and less paper will need to be disposed of or burned.
“Eight million trees are cut down every year to make pencils, and that contributes to deforestation and climate change. Also, about 85 billion tonnes of wastepaper are generated every year and 32 billion tonnes of this wastepaper is dumped and burnt down. Now, this contributes also to climate change, but on the other side, we can address climate change by making pencils from recycled paper,” he says.
The UN estimates that more than 13 million hectares of forests are lost each year due to deforestation, of which 36 percent are used to make paper and 42 percent to make wood-based items, which amount to 18 to 20 billion pencils.
Yesterday’s news, tomorrow’s pencils.
