As marketing teams, we're fiercely protective of our brands. Colours, logos, and campaign messaging are scrutinised and carefully decided, and at Vibrant Colour, we love playing our part in keeping you looking consistent.
However, what happens to all your stuff when you decide to update or refresh your brand?
In the last year or two, we've had a few customers in this situation - with materials such as pens in cupboards featuring their old branding, which they no longer want in circulation. Leaflets and brochures can be recycled through usual channels - and we're pretty good at that in the UK. 70.6% of paper/cardboard put into circulation was recycled last year.
Pens are a bit trickier, though. Every pen includes a multitude of components, and if they're in good working order, recycling adds complexity and energy usage.
To that end, we now send all our excess pens, and those on behalf of our clients, to a great charity called Pens for Kids, based in Kent. They accept all kinds of working pens, test them, and send them to schools around the world.
In many countries education is free, but missing income, uniforms and cost of school utensils like pens are still big hurdles to overcome. In some countries the average income per family is a dollar or two a day, pens are big investments and quickly dry out under the relentless Equatorial sun.
The charity has sent more than 1.2m pens to those in need since its launch, in countries across the globe.
Vibrant Colour is more than happy to cover the cost of postage to Pens for Kids from any of our clients - whether we've supplied the pens or not. Simply get in touch and we'll book a Royal Mail collection for you, so you don't even have to leave your office.
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