Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Crayola's Form Letter Response

Thank you for your recent inquiry. Crayola is the manufacturer of high quality creative expression products marketed primarily under the Crayola and Silly Putty brand names.

Crayola is continually evaluating opportunities to make our products environmentally friendly. We currently take steps to address environmental health and safety issues by reducing, reusing and recycling our materials. For example, at least 90% of Crayola Crayon packaging is made from recycled cardboard and nearly all Crayola product packaging is made of recyclable materials. For years, Crayola has remelted crayons that do not meet our high quality molding standards and reused the wax. All Crayola facilities comply with local and federal clean air standards.

I am sorry to disappoint you, unfortunately, Crayola twistable plastic casings are not recyclable at this time.

Be assured your comments have been shared with our marketing and manufacturing teams.We appreciate your contact. If additional assistance is needed, you may reach us by telephone at (800) 272-9652 weekdays between 9 AM and 4 PM Eastern Time or e-mail by visiting Crayola.com.

Best wishes for a colorful future!

Colorfully yours,
Christina NeighConsumer Affairs RepresentativeCRAYOLA

They didn't answer my questions AT ALL, and worse yet, I now find out their casings aren't EVEN recyclable!!!

I think it's time for a Crayola boycott.

Oh and just a point of clarification here in case anyone is fooled into thinking remelting wax crayons that were malformed is a decision they've made for the environment. I work with encaustic paints (beeswax mixed with pigments and natural resins) and you can remelt them a million times without losing anything in quality. Its a simple cost saving method! Why on earth would they throw them away?

I worked in a glass factory while I was at university - same deal, they remelt down malformed glass to recover the silica, not to do anyone else any favours.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

HI Mud Mama. You left a comment about this issue on my blog and asked about a "blog carrousel." Have you heard of Carnival of the Green? If you go to treehugger.com and search for Carnival of the Green, you will find the page for posting to it.

Hope that helps.

Beth

Beck said...

You know, that's really interesting - I'd never even thougt about Crayola Twistables from that position before, but you're right.

Sarah said...

So, we're entering the crayon stage - what's the enviro and safety friendly option?

Kerry said...

My best advise is to buy Stockmar brand crayons - they meet european health and safety regulations, they are not over packaged and you can buy individual crayons when one wears down, and they contain no petroleum byproducts (and they smell of the beeswax and are in very natural colours too).

A super cheap SOY crayon - NICE texture BUT there have been lead issues in the past with the co - is Prang's soy crayons.