VENT for Change: Meet The Brand

The planet needs help, and so do many of the people on it. VENT for Change, a company based here in the South West in Bristol, is offering both. How? By creating fabulous 'upcycled' items of stationery and donating 10% of their net sales turnover to educational projects, that's how.

For most of us, stationery is a mix of 'yes, I really need this' - a pad of paper, a pencil - and 'nice to have' - an all-singing, all-dancing hardback notebook and a pen that's comfortable to write with. For others, though, stationery is akin to gold: quite difficult to get hold of, but very much treasured once it's acquired. VENT for Change ensures that - to misquote Mick Jagger - all of us get what we want, as well as what we need. We get a choice of beautifully-made notebooks, journals and list pads, plus simple pens and pencils, and our purchases help to ensure that children in countries such as Uganda and Pakistan get the support and the materials they need to pursue their hard-won education.

So... you fancy a new notebook? All right, well, there's plenty of choice. Let's start with the Write collection. This is a range of simply-styled notebooks with covers made from recycled board and bound with linen. Inside, the paper is 100% FSC-certified sustainable paper, and you can choose from a lined, plain or dotgrid layout. Oh, and either A5 or A6 as well.

Then there's the Ideas collection. These take eco-friendliness a step further, by using corn fibre and reclaimed coffee cups to make the covers, while the Make a Mark range uses recycled leather. This renders them both flexible and beautifully tactile, and are available in some really lovely colours including Burnt Orange and Dusty Blue. There's a choice of 3 sizes, with A5 equipped with an elastic closure for safekeeping.

To complement the notebooks there are pencils made from recycled CD cases, with a normal graphite core which can be sharpened with a standard pencil sharpener. This whole construction gives them a pleasing durability and reduces the amount of plastic going to landfill. Also, there are pens with a long-lasting ink reservoir which are made from recycled single-use plastic - and they can be recycled again at the end of their life. Both are packaged in recycled paper.

Perhaps our favourite, though, is the Sucseed collection (if only for their name!) These notebooks use industry by-products to create the covers, so all the left-overs from fruit processing, coffee making and botanicals live to give pleasure another day!

What's more, they're all made with 100% green energy. Can't get much better than that.