Eco purchasing for your office products

At Quills, we take sustainability very seriously. As a company, we have introduced a number of steps to increase our own environmental commitment, as well as sourcing products that have environmental credentials to satisfy growing customer demand. 

These days, eco-friendly and sustainable office supplies are more plentiful, making them easier to find and cheaper to buy. Being environmentally aware is no longer an additional expense which your company will find hard to justify, so we’ve made it easier for you to choose green office products with our website’s new Eco-Friendly Office Supplies section and Eco-Aware Search & Filter function. 

This makes it quick and easy for you to choose products with green credentials, as well as products to encourage your staff to recycle. When you think of eco-friendly stationery, recycled paper is the product that springs to mind. But there are many more, sometimes surprising, products that will help you embrace sustainability in the stationery cabinet. These include ballpoint pens that have been largely created with recycled plastics, recyclable packing tape, lever arch files made from recycled PVC, and recycled and recyclable labels, not to mention recyclable recycling bins. 

There are some products that have always been recyclable that find themselves in the limelight again after years of being considered somewhat second best to their now frowned-upon plastic counterparts. The humble paper cup, for example, or a wooden broom with which to make a green clean sweep. Some traditional products are now going even further, with the advent of biodegradable paper plates and compostable cutlery.  

Our sustainable purchasing solutions will help you in a number of ways. These include adding green icons in our catalogue; providing eco alternatives to products you regularly order from us; recycling batteries, technology and toners; and offering Replaceable Ink Pack Systems (RIPS) technology. This is part of our CSR commitment to minimise our own environmental impact, which also includes using recyclable cardboard packaging materials, minimising delivery routes and offsetting carbon emissions through the World Land Trust. At head office, we recycle paper, cardboard, plastics and toner cartridges; encourage staff to minimise the amount of paper they use; and even use glass milk bottles. 

Look for the green icons

When you’re looking through our catalogue, you’ll notice that we use icons to show where a product has environmental credentials. The ones to look out for are the green leaf symbol, which shows that a product has greener credentials, and the green recycling symbol which shows that paper has been made from recycled content. To find out more about a labelled product’s eco-credentials, check the Specifications at the bottom of the product description page.