Here’s another great example of taking one industry’s trash and turning it into a raw material for another. Tokyo Electric Power happens to have a pile of worn-out graphite “brushes” from their generators. Tombow Pencil Co makes pencils. Pencil “lead” is actually graphite, therefore a deal is made. With a few adjustments to the method that the power company crushes its brushes, decent quality pencil lead can be produces. Read more on JFS.
Making Pencil Lead from Generator Brushes
By Nick Aster | October 18th, 2005 
8 Comments
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October 19, 2005 at 9:45 am PDT | Treehugger writes:
Making Pencil Lead from Generator Brushes
Tokyo Electric Power (TEPCO) and Tombow Pencil recently announced that they have jointly developed mechanical pencil “leads” recycled from generator brushes used in TEPCO’s thermal power plants. Generator brushes are made from highly pure graphite (ove…
October 19, 2005 at 17:26 pm PDT | Theyjust Dontgetit writes:
I have to wonder why they don’t adopt proper sustainability protocol. They should process worn-out brushes back into new brushes. The pencil lead approach is really just down-cycling, it doesn’t prevent this commodity from going to landfill… only postpones it.
October 21, 2005 at 10:49 am PDT | alexanderhorre writes:
It depends on the graphite composition. Graphite to Graphite could be considered an upcycle, or high-quality to high-quality recycle. Now I’d agree with you if this graphite when to make a basketball hoop.
October 13, 2006 at 3:42 am PDT | lora writes:
hmm so how is lead made
March 15, 2008 at 4:07 am PDT | Toby writes:
I am intrested in buying for export used generator set in canopy or open diesel or gas please let us know if you have any
July 22, 2008 at 6:14 am PDT | Ted writes:
Do they take old generator brushes and recycle them into new ones?
May 07, 2009 at 14:14 pm PDT | Anonymous writes:
acimasiz op
May 07, 2009 at 14:14 pm PDT | Anonymous writes:
acimasiz op