ForeverPen: Everlasting Everyday Carry
Out of Manchester, UK comes something of epically bite-sized proportions: a 0.99-inch-long inkless writing implement. If titanium everyday carry pens are your kind of kink, welcome, my friend, to the ForeverPen fore. Let’s unpack its most unordinary feature: it doesn’t use ink.
First: How?
World’s Tiniest — the creator behind the inkless pen — modernized “a centuries-old drawing technique called silverpoint.” The result is an exceptionally durable, hard-wearing silver tip that leaves behind a sort of solid silver ink, much to the same effect as its ballpoint or gel-ink counterparts. But the crucial ways in which solid ink outperforms liquid ink are well worth noting:
- Permanently adheres to any solid receiving surface (paper, card, plastic, wood, etc.)
- Works independently of gravitational pull (write upside-down or in zero-gravity arenas without failure)
- Provides full functionality “practically forever” (no need to refill nor replace)
- Demarcations resist smudging and endure all types of weather
- Offers versatile applications (use it as a parcel opener, a pry tool, or to get that unidentified funk out from under your nail)
Second: Why?
The World’s Tiniest team developed the ForeverPen’s inkless design for one primary reason (sustainability) and a few secondary ones (convenience, durability, fail proofing, uniqueness).
Discarded pens and cartridges are non-biodegradable and highly toxic — think of them as plastic straws on steroids. Not only do their hollow, straw-like constructions pose the same threat to wildlife and waterways as single-use straws, plastic pens also seep chemically caustic ink into the environment. The ecological damage from one pen may be trivial, but the collateral damage created by the annual tossing of ≈1.6 billion pens (the US alone) isn’t so erasable.
Thoughtful yet rudimentary, the pen’s architecture is meant to mitigate material waste on all fronts — from development and production to transit emissions, then through the entirety of its useful life (which, we’re told, should be at least as long as your useful life).
Its miniature size means it requires minimal raw materials. The writing tip is tempered silver. The body (only one-third the length of a fresh Crayola) features one of three metals: titanium, copper, or brass. A sizable passthrough at the pen’s crown accommodates most keyrings, zippers and further reduces the ForeverPen’s footprint.
The absence of ink further minimizes the material impact required to sustain the pen’s usefulness. And the materials comprising each ForeverPen are naturally occurring, ecologically compatible, and enduring.
Third: Buy.
Pledges for the ForeverPen start at £24 ($34 USD) for a single package. All orders are eligible to ship anywhere in the world, with the first round of deliveries slated for August 2021. Specifically, backers can choose between the following finishes:
- Grade 5 Titanium
- High Purity Copper
- Naval Grade Brass
At the time of writing, the ForeverPen Kickstarter campaign has enjoyed a bit more than 9,000 pledges totaling $442,000 in funding. It’s an amount that far outstrips the creators’ $3,500 pledge goal by a giddy $437,000.
If that strikes you as too much cash for something so petite, remember that not always is it the bigger tool that gets the job done, but the most adept.
Sources:
Infographic: Pens and Pencils by the Numbers – Earth911
Plastic Pen Pollution: Find Out the Right Way to Write – Sustainable Living
What I Plan To Do About My Disposable Pen Peeve – We Hate to Waste