Birth of the brand
My name is Wada Kealotswe, i grew up in Francistown. I graduated from the University of Pretoria with a Bcom Economics and a BA in Development Studies from UNISA degrees. I have vast experience in development economics. A mother of one awesome boy who has been testing my products for 2 years. Last but not least am the founder of a brand called Eco Zera Pencils.I had pitched up a paper recycling project with the World Bank in 2019 for Smart and Resilient cities of which led me to participate in the 2019 Youth Conference in Washington DC. Well the project did make it to the finals but it inspired me to continue with the recycling theme project.As I was pursuing my Development Studies degree one topic that stood out for me was climate change. It was very interesting for me and I could see that the world is driving to a point were we all have to participate in saving our planet from global warming. Hence the use of newspaper instead of wood that allows trees to be cut disrupting our biodiversity.
Our manufacturing process
Our process requires 80% of the work to be done by hand only 20% requires the use of machines. We 1st cut or newspaper to the size of the graphite, which will be inserted by hand and the edge of the cut newspaper, we use paper glue to secure the graphite. Then we have a machine that rolls the rest of the paper to make our pencil rod which is secured by resin glue. The rod will be dried in the sun for about 4 hours before using an electric oven which hardens the pencil rod to resemble wood. The rod is then cut at the two ends to have shape and filed to have a smooth feel. We then dress it with an eraser, sharpen it and package it in a branded box of 12. We have manufactured about 100 000 pencils so far.
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