Buy Smart. Give Smarts. Me to We and Staples launch a new line of school supplies that are eco-friendly AND go a long way in helping kids become successful students.

One of my favourite blog posts is one that I wrote about being eco-friendly for back-to-school shopping. My mom and I went to Staples and walked up and down the aisles to choose the most eco-friendly supplies. They had amazing products like a notebook made from sugarcane, binders that are made from 100% recycled chipboard, and pens and pencils were biodegradable. I felt good knowing that I was making good and informed choices to start my school year and I was able to get everything that I needed.  This showed that Staples really cared about the environment and made good choices available, so whenever I have needed more school supplies, I knew where to go and what to look for.

A few months ago, it got even better at Staples. Staples partnered with Me to We and now their stores offer even more to make the world a better place not just for the environment, but for people too. Me To We and Staples teamed up to create new eco-friendly school supplies that give back.  Me To We’s motto is “better choices for a better world” and Staples motto is “that was easy”, they connect exactly to this new line of school supplies. When you buy a product, you can easily make the world a better place.

Every product that Me To We and Staples make made in an envrionmentally responsible way. Some of the products like the backpacks, lunch bags and pencilcases are made from recycled plastic water bottles and the notebooks, binders and paper products are made from post-consumer recycled paper.

But, like I said, this is about more than the environment.  The coolest benefit of the Staples and Me To We products are that they all have an impact that reaches students who don’t have the kind of access to school and school supplies that we do here in Canada.  When you buy a product, a student in one of Free The Children’s developing communities like Kenya, India, Nicuragua, Ghana, Ecuador get what they need to go to school. The impacts of the whole line include all of Free The Childrens Adopt a Village Pillars – education, health, clean water, agriculture and food security and alternative income and livelihood development.

Lots of people think that they are too young to make a difference, that it is so hard, but with this, you can send kids to school and the ability for families and communities to live well. For example, girls have to walk miles and miles to walk to get water for their village, which is a barrier for the girls to go to school. When you purchase a Me to We Water bottle you provide clean water for a year to someone. And just like that, you have changed someone’s life. When you get school or office supplies so that you can learn and go to school, you are also giving other people the chance to learn and go to school.

Here are some of the most impactful products that are also some of my favorites for the designs and impacts:

• The backpack gives an entire year of school supplies – you need pens, pencils and books to study
• The lunch bag gives a month of school lunches – sometimes even when kids get to go to school, they will be distracted because they have not eaten well and are very hungry
• Every pencil gives a pencil
• A notebook provides seeds for farming or a nescesarry medical treatment
• A binder plants 3 trees

On every  Me To We product, there is something called Track Your Impact. There is a unique code you can type it in www.trackyourimpact.ca where it is going and the difference that you are making. This makes the impact much more personal, because you know where your gift will change a life. I think that it is pretty cool that  Me To We added Track Your Impact to the school supplies so when you buy those products, you can have a better understanding of your gift.

I wanted to look at some real numbers to look at the real change that is possible with this new project. There are 120,000 students in the York Region District School Board. If they all bought these school supplies, this is what would happen:

• Pencil cases – 360, 000 pencils will be given
• Binder – 360, 000 trees will be planted
• Backpack – 120, 000 students will be given school supplies for a year
• Lunchbag – 2, 400, 000 school lunches will be provided
• Water bottle – 120, 000 students will get access to clean water for a year
• Magnets – 120, 000 sets of medical treatments will be given
• Notebook – 120, 000 packages of farming seeds will be given

This is the amount of change that we can create together in my school board alone.  More math –  all together, 3, 600, 000 impacts would be made!  Isn’t that amazing?

I know that the school year has just ended, but this makes me look forward to September.

If you want to learn more about the line and more products, you can check them out in store or online. Oh, and when you’re in the store and you hear someone talking about the Me to We line over the speakers….that’s me!

I was really proud to be a part of the official launch event last week at Staples where Me to We and Staples gave out three Impact Awards to honour and celebrate change that has been made right here at home by a school, a teacher and a student. I got to interview each of the winners and I’m going to tell you more about them in another post. They were all so deserving of the award and they really inspired me. Here is a photo from the launch with Marc Kielburger and Roxanne Joyal (with their daughter),  Pete Gibel of Staples and our special guest, JRDN.

Here is a video to see and learn more about the Me to We line of school supplies at Staples: