Reasons to Choose Recycled Paper Notebooks
Next time you need a notebook, make the effort to choose ones made from post-consumer recycled paper. You won’t find these in most shops, so stock up online. The trees will thank you!
Although most virgin paper is FSC-certified, ‘sustainable forests’ often mean old-growth trees are chopped down (which provide homes for wildlife) and replaced by fast-growing saplings that are grown with toxic pesticides. Some of this paper is also bleached with chlorine, which pollutes waterways and harms wildlife.
Creating paper from old paper is a great way to close the loop, and also uses less water and energy. It also helps to save our forests, and all the creatures that live within them.
Reducing Landfill and Pollution
That horrible smell at landfills, is usually due to rotting paper gas. So by choosing recycled notebooks, you help to use up that waste paper, which then goes to make other items.
Recycling 1 tonne of paper saves 17 trees and 26,000 litres of water. And also cuts up to 74% air pollution and reduces methane emissions at landfills.
Supporting Local Artisans
Instead of supporting the big brands like Basildon Bond, choosing post-consumer recycled paper means you are supporting small artisans, who do their work with love, not just for profit. This also helps to boost local economies.
A small artisan making handmade notebooks is likely going to use the local pub for lunch, and the local market to find sandwich ingredients.
Good Tuesday Illustrated Notebooks
Good Tuesday makes beautiful organised notebooks, made with post-consumer recycled paper, and sent in plastic-free packaging. The books are also designed to open, and lay flat. There are even theme-related notebooks like this one for ‘notes from the garden’.
Read our posts on pet-friendly gardens and wildlife-friendly gardens. Also how to stop birds flying into windows.
PortWest Journals (made in Kent)
PortWestLDN are A5 journals, made in Kent from a blend of post-consumer recycled paper and upcycled coffee cups, with a handy page marker. Choose from 192 lined or dotted pages. Made using green energy.
The company also offers ‘second’ notebooks for a little discount, due to minor blemishes due to transport or storage (usually little things like faint cover scratches, unevenly rounded corners or the odd print misalignment).
The recycled sketch pads are wire-bound and feature heavy recycled card and inside recycled paper, with non-plastic coated recycled metal wire (85 blank pages).
CoffeeNotes (made from old coffee cups!)
CoffeeNotes is a unique company in Dorset, which makes beautiful notebooks. The difference is that they are made from recycled coffee cups. Most disposable coffee cups can’t be recycled, as they contain 5% plastic.
So this company melts down the cups to use the paper for the books, and then uses the plastic as ‘energy’ to make the cups!
All are vegan (bar one pad, made with recycled wool cover).
The to-do list pads are ideal as reminders or for shopping lists. Sold in a pack of three tall pads, each one has 60 tear-off pages with lined tick box sections and dotted sections, and dotted reverse sides.
The wire-bound pads contain dotted pages, and a folded cover so no glue is needed, the spiral spine is easily recycled. Also in plain and lined versions.
The stitched pads have recycled softback covers and the set includes plain, lined and dotted pages.
The planner features a cover made from real coffee waste, and a seven-day layout to plan your week. With blank columns for weekdays, and spaces for tasks and reminders.
Also as an organiser pad with tear-away pages and three flexible spaces for lists, notes and doodles.
About Blanks (made from old book covers)
About Blanks is a unique company. These notebooks are made by repurposing old books from libraries, that would otherwise have gone to landfill. And the company does all it can to use up recycled materials, rather than use new.
The company also unique employs people with disabilities and those with poor job prospects, to make the books.
This company is based over the sea with our Dutch friends in Rotterdam. Home to one of the world’s biggest ports, you can sail here from Hull (though it will take you 11 hours and cost several hundred pounds).
Vent 4 Change (made from recycled trash)
Vent 4 Change is a company that takes waste materials, and uses them to produce beautiful notebooks. Profits also help to fund children’s education.
Some items are made from recycled leather (we don’t list these, in case it creates a market).
This ocean waste notebook is sustainably made in Europe, with green energy. It has a textured fabric cover and 200 inner pages, with the cover being made from recycled ocean plastic waste (blended with post-consumer waste).
Sucseed A5 notebooks (also in A6 size) are different colours, depending on the kind of waste each notebook is recycled with:
- Coffee Beans
- Cherry Fruits
- Lavender
- Kiwi Fruits
The books contain plain, lined and to-do list pages.
Unique Paper Gifts from Yorkshire
Studio Wald is a unique company, run by a couple who print unique paper goods in Yorkshire, to save trees and give you something interesting to write on!
This pretty A5 notebook contains 48 recycled paper pages, ideal for notes, sketches, lists and doodles. It also has a clever folder to keep the book in, and provide somewhere for extra paperwork.
Designed, printed and finished in Yorkshire, the cover contains a little cotton, and it’s secured with a thick black rubber band closure, packed in a biodegradable corn/potato starch bag.
The gardener’s diary is open-dated, and shows a month to view, with enough pages to last a year. Ideal to make a note of planting dates and garden reminders, and to refer back, when complete.
Before planting, learn about pet-friendly gardens. Avoid facing indoor foliage to gardens, to help stop birds flying into windows.
Recipe Notecards are sold as a set of four blank cards, with vegan vegetable soups on the reverse side of each illustration. Once the card has been used, the recipient can tear the perforated edge, to keep the recipe.
Before cooking, read up on kitchen safety for people and pets.
Another Loop Stationery (miniature artworks!)
Another Loop is a wonderfully original company, founded by two art students. They create unique stationery gifts that are like miniature works of art, far more interesting than the boring fodder you find on the high street.
Everything is designed from scratch in a small studio using hot foil press. For occasions big or small, you are sure to find something to suit. All paper used is FSC-certified and where possible, uses recycled fibres and renewable energy.
As items are printed in small batches, there is no waste. Any offcuts are turned into other products like gift tags. All foil is easy to recycle, and waste foil is sent off, to make into clean energy. Their packaging is not always the prettiest, but that’s because it’s usually recycled too!