Jenny Buckler, left, and Kareena Harris, who with Priscilla loong, have crafted a business turning waste paper rubbish into high-end stationery.
Misprint Co. is stationery business helping New Zealanders become more sustainable one sheet of paper at a time.
The brainchild of former design students Jenny Buckler, Kareena Harris and Priscilla Loong, Misprint Co. takes hardly-used waste paper and repurposes it into high-end stationery.
The kernel of the idea came to the trio when they saw yellow recycling bins at design school overflowing with hardly-used paper.
“We’re not some tree hugging company, we reckon repurposing before recycling is just common sense. Our repurposed paper notebooks have become a vehicle for behavioural change,” Ms Buckler says.
Although the three met at high school, the idea for the company itself was borne out of a Massey honours degree paper called Creative Futures.
“The paper was about using design thinking and coming up with a business idea, Ms Harris says. “After a false start we focused on paper and stationery.”
The team put specially designed bins around the Massey Wellington campus to collect non-confidential waste paper of the necessary size and then began repurposing that paper into notebooks. After completing the Creative Future paper, the trio took the idea to SPRING, a creative enterprise programme at the college of Creative Arts, and further developed it at Lightning Lab Manufacturing, a start-up programme incubator. They are now housed in Wellington Creative HQ, a start-up development base.
The Misprint Co. now collects paper from numerous sources, including local businesses, corporates, schools and other universities.
“We ship from our online store, we also sell in a few retail stores around the country,” Ms Buckler says. “We really embrace the idea of the closed loop cycle and re-using New Zealand’s waste in New Zealand. For that reason, we will not look to produce overseas and instead plan to expand Misprint’s reach with local people, local paper and local printers.”
Misprint also offers an ecoloop service where businesses can re-purpose their waste paper into their own company-branded stationery.
“We offer fully customisable notebooks with logos, cover stocks and even bindings for some extra uniqueness. This creates great marketing material for businesses, all the while showing physical evidence of sustainability,” Ms Buckler says.
The company has grown steadily since its inception and now repurposes about 800 books a month. The next step is to move into the Auckland market. Meanwhile the ecoloop is working in more ways than one. Two of the trio are back at Massey helping teach the Creative Futures paper and the company employs a Massey intern. The success of their design is not only showing tangible results with product sales either as Misprint Co. won bronze at the 2016 best Awards in two categories. Sustainable Product Design and Consumer Product Design.
Their notebooks are uniquely crafted, with loads of personality and no two the same. Waste paper has never looked better.