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The Staple-less Stapler

07-30-2007stapler.jpg

No, that's not a UFO.

That's a stapler! Actually, "stapler" might be a bit of a misnomer as the thing doesn't actually employ staples. Remember hanging chads? Somehow, this little contraption uses a hanging chad to bind up to 5 pieces of paper together, just as well as a real staple.

 
 

This is the perfect example of one of those nice, small changes you can make that will cut down on just a bit of waste.

And, if everyone cuts down on just a bit of waste ... well, you know what happens.

Actually, according to ecofabulous, we would save 120 tons of steel if every office worker used one less staple a day for a year.

They come in a variety of colors and only cost $7.95. And besides, they're better looking than that 80-year-old Swingline that jams every single time we try to use it.

Click here for all the details.

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Comments (7)

Somehow, this little contraption uses a hanging chad to bind up to 5 pieces of paper together, just as well as a real staple.

Remember elementary school, where if you didn't have a stapler, you'd fold over the corners of the pages, tear a little strip, and fold it the other way, and that held your hastily penciled essay together?

This is a cleaner, neater, and politer version of that.

posted by wende in the twin cities on August 1st 2007 at 5:34am
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But it only "staples" five pieces of paper together. Seems like you'd still need a real stapler in addition to this one. Maybe if someone combined the two, it would truly be eco-friendly.

Alternatively, as in my office, you could use varying sizes of bulldog clips.

posted by shani-o on August 1st 2007 at 6:22am
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and is it eco-friendly for us to all go buy new "staplers"?

posted by damova on August 1st 2007 at 6:40am
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damova, excellent question. Doesn't living green mean cutting back on the consumption of goods?

posted by Mason on August 1st 2007 at 6:49am
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Paper clips: the eco-friendly solution for when you absolutely need a paper record.

Yes, they require resources to manufacture, but:

(a) They never wear out, unless you untwist one to try to pry things out of other things.

(b) No waste when you separate a document to photocopy it, or just because you want to lay the pages out flat!

(c) No damage to your documents, other than maybe a dent. (Okay, really old paper clips on documents stored for decades sometimes leave rust marks.)

(c) When you shred the document, the paper clip is fully reusable! It never goes into the waste stream.

posted by wende in the twin cities on August 1st 2007 at 6:53am
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Saving the environment from nasty paperclips is all good, but if global warming is to be avoided, this simply won’t cut it.

One of the best ways of contributing is to become a vegetarian(!)
It’s an achievable goal, and you don’t need to expose some polluting multinational firm.

If you are not aware of the principles of photosynthesis and respiration, please look it up on in a dictionary (http://www.wikipedia.org) before reading the rest.

The fact, that only a fraction of the energy a pig eats is stored in it’s body, means that energy is wasted when corn, for instance, is converted to meat, and we could have fed a lot more people had we just fed them with corn.

It takes 3kJ of corn to create 1kJ of pork
And takes 12kJ of corn to create 1kJ of chicken meat

On top of that, in modern farming, 2kJ of energy is used per every 1kJ of energy bound in food.

That means that for every 1 kJ of KFC you eat, more that 24 kJ of energy has been wasted in the process

Also, the cattle industry is contributes more to the global warming than the entire transformation-sector. (because of CO2 and mainly methane excreted by the cows)

Makes you think, doesn’t it..?

I hope..

posted by Kristian Addington on August 7th 2007 at 4:54am
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Oops, meant transportation-sector...
All these hidden messages in advertisement must be getting to me

posted by Kristian Addington on August 7th 2007 at 6:03am
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