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Developing an environmentally friendly product

You might also be surprised to learn that developing the design and the manufacturing process of the pencil was a three year task, and very complex. It had to be just right or it would not open up a new market in a world that is very fully supplied with pencils already.

Edward had worked in plastics and their recycling for some time and wanted to start his own company, taking a waste product and recycling it back to its first user. This is called 'closed loop recycling' (G). When asked why, he said 'It seemed like an obvious thing to do.' 'You can see something as waste material or as a resource' he went on to say.

A central aim was to produce something that was commercially as well as environmentally sound. There would be no point in developing a product that was extremely environmentally desirable if no one would buy it or if it made a loss and he couldn't afford to go on producing it.

He considered two sources that produce huge quantities of waste plastics: McDonald's burger cartons and vending machine cups. The trouble with the burger cartons was that he'd have to sell whatever he made from them solely to McDonald's. Tying yourself to just one customer is not good for any business.

  Task 1 - Business to business values

By contrast, vending cups are used by many businesses any of which could become a customer. Edward also knew that over 4,000,000,000 (yes that's 4 billion!) vending cups are used in the UK alone each year. And he knew that one of the cup suppliers was already collecting used cups and looking for something worthwhile to do with them.

He also knew how to make wood substitute products from plastics - which is complicated because wood is such a complex material - strong but soft, stiff but flexible, tough and resilient.

So he came up with the recycled plastics pencil idea at an early stage, as the product would:

• be small

• be simple (relatively!)

• with fewer engineering demands.

He foresaw that he would have to be careful with the strength of the pencils, their flexibility, and aesthetics (G). He also knew that plastics were prone to sudden failure breakages but that reinforcing them was possible by a number of means.

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