One major aspect that kept me away from ballpoint and rollerball pens for the last couple of years (except for the always useful Lamy pico) is the heavy use of plastic and metal for the refills. I don’t have anything against metal, but I want my pen being made out of it and not something short-lived like a refill 😅
Seems like, I won’t have to hold back there for much longer anymore, though! Mitsubishi sub-company uni-ball seems to have been working on paper-based pen refills for some time and at the end of last year made a press-release announcing that they’ve “succeeded”. You can find a detailed look at the announcement on unsharpen.com but in general, the part that actually holds ballpoint ink is now mostly made out of paper which should reduce the use of metal/plastic by 80%.
This just sounds awesome! And now I want to have that also for rollerball refills and now that I’ve ordered a Mark One by Studio Neat, a refill compatible with that made out of paper would be even better 😁
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