ciklo is the first pen designed, sourced and manufactured in Quebec using post-consumer recycled plastic. The ciklo itself is recyclable.
Being locally made means a 99% reduction in GHG emissions compared to a pen made in Asia.
According to Statistics Canada, 145 million pens are imported into the country in an average year. Collectively, these pens travel thousands of kilometres and generate a significant amount of non-recyclable plastic waste that winds up in landfill.
As a designer of objects, kotmo’s primary mission is to use eco-design to create sustainable, locally made promotional items. Significant demand from clients motivated the design team to build the most environment-friendly pen possible.
After more than three years of research, collaborations with key players in manufacturing and plenty of trial and error, kotmo’s design team arrived at the final ciklo design. By bringing together multiple local companies for the project, kotmo has built a new production chain to make a high-quality project and pursue its mission to revolutionizing the promotional items industry by delivering a sustainable alternative.
Convert your old ciklos into new ones
kotmo has established a ciklo collection program in collaboration with MultiRecycle.
Your financial commitment to this program will give you access to an annual report on your ciklo orders. It will include environmental, economic and social statistics to complete your corporate documentation.
The ciklo is the result of a design and research process that took more than three years. Initially, we conceived the ciklo as the first compostable pen made entirely in Quebec. However, we came to realize that making a compostable pen was actually a bad idea for at least three reasons:
Currently, the best solution is to make the ciklo from plastic, using a closed-loop system.
Post-consumer recycled plastics are plastics that have been used once as a product, collected, cleaned, recycled and transformed into something else. Therefore, a new product made with post-consumer plastic (ciklo) is part of a circular economy.
Post-consumer plastic is less harmful to the environment than new plastic, because it does not require the extraction of new raw materials (hydrocarbons) and its production is less energy-intensive.2.
Polypropylene, also known as plastic no. 5, is used in many industries. It is found in automobiles, household appliances, certain types of packaging, upholstery fabric and yogurt containers.
The use of polypropylene rather than PET (the plastic used to make plastic bottles) helps reduce the impacts associated with raw material production by 40%3.
The production of a ciklo results in the emission of 4 grams of CO2 – about the same as the emissions created when you send an email.4 The ciklo is made in Quebec, where manufacturers use hydroelectric power. This helps reduce the impact of manufacturing vs. a similar product made in Asia. In fact, local production prevents 99% of manufacturing-related emissions.5
The ciklo is entirely made in Quebec. The raw material, polypropylene (PP), is sourced through the recycling of used products that Quebecers place in their recycling bins. When recycling is done, it is sent to our manufacturer in Beauce. The pen’s casing is then sent to Chaudière-Appalaches, where it is customized and assembled. Next, the finished pens are shipped to our office in Montreal for final quality control before being sent to you. In all, ciklo production involves nine companies, including two social reintegration enterprises, a woman-owned company, a cooperative, a B Corp certified company and a family business.
This “mark” which symbolizes the injection point is inevitable in the injection molding process. Often, manufacturers manage to minimize or hide it by using more chemically treated industrial plastics (probably non-recycled or PET) or by sanding and applying paint or coating to the products themselves. Because the ciklo pen is “the most durable pen produced in North America,” kotmo has deliberately avoided these options. Kotmo uses 100% recycled polypropylene PP resin which is also 100% recyclable. The plastic is colored with eco-friendly dyes (hence the slight color variation between batches) and not painted and coated, which would require an extra step of manufacturing and use of chemicals, as well as making the pen less easy to recycle.
The ciklo is the first recycled and recyclable pen made locally. That makes it possible to reduce GHG emissions by 80% compared to pens imported from Asia.6 It has been ecodesigned for reduced environmental impact: the ciklo uses materials with limited impact, has fewer parts than a conventional pen and is also lighter. What’s more, the ciklo was developed specifically for a circular economy: all materials used to make it come from Quebecers’ recycling bins and, at the end of its life, it is once again sent to plastic recyclers in Quebec. We’ve done everything necessary to ensure that the ciklo would be recycled at the end of its life, unlike its Asian counterpart, thanks to our collection program developed in collaboration with MultiRecycle.
A carbon-neutral item is a product “whose atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions are offset by environmentally responsible actions or by the production and storage of renewable energy.”7”
To achieve carbon-neutrality, the first step is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then to offset the emissions that could not be eliminated.
In the case of the ciklo, we prefer to focus on our GHG reduction efforts rather than purchasing carbon credits to offset our emissions. We have reduced GHG emissions by 99% by having the pen manufactured in Quebec. We use recycled polypropylene, which produces 40% less emissions than recycled PET. We prioritize nearby companies to perform the different production steps, which reduces transportation-related emissions. Lastly, ciklos are delivered in bulk.
The available colours for the ciklo are: blue, black, grey, white, orange, green, turquoise, old pink, raspberry and red. More colors are coming soon !
The ciklo is customized using digital printing (CMYK). The maximum printable surface is 2,85" x 0,3125".
The Möbius strip logo and “Fait au Québec | Made in Canada” are printed on all ciklo.
Allow 2 to 3 weeks for your order to be shipped.
If one of the ciklo does not pass quality control during assembly, it is directly set aside to be recycled with our MultiRecycle partners. Thus, there are no losses during the manufacturing process since the cartridges are added to the ciklo after this quality control step.
Unfortunately, there is currently no Quebec-made ink cartridge available. We chose German-made Schmidt cartridges because they have a longer useful life than conventional cartridges.
The ciklo is sent to our partner, MultiRecycle, which disassembles the pens (removes their cartridges) to ensure that the casing is not contaminated and is fit for recycling. The casing is then sent to their recycling partner. Once recycled, the resulting material can be used by a variety of Quebec manufacturers, including kotmo.
Once the box is full, simply follow the steps indicated in the ciklo collection program.
Without the collection program, the ciklo is technically recyclable but would not actually be recycled. Sorting centres, particularly recycling centres, are designed to handle mainly packaging. Pens are too small and therefore rejected during sorting and sent to landfill instead. The collection program ensures that ciklos are recycled, giving them new life.
We have designed our own recycling program in order to ensure that our ciklos are recycled in Quebec and preserve the traceability of our raw material. As a result, we (and you) are contributing to the growth and success of Quebec’s recycling chain.
Your financial commitment to this program will give you access to an annual report on your ciklo orders. It will include environmental, economic and social statistics to complete your corporate documentation.
The initial fee for the collection program is $49.95. The fee for each box of ciklos is $24.95 ($0.12 per pen).
Once recycled, the material from a ciklo is resold by the recycler to Quebec-based plastic products manufacturers. Our goal is to purchase this recyclable material to make more pens, closing the loop.
Yes ! To buy ciklo by the unit, go to our page ciklo by unit to see our point of sales.
Yes, you can choose between blue or black for ciklo on our website. In stores, the ciklo's ink match the ciklo's color.
The minimum order is 200 units.
1 Éco Entreprises Québec. Emballages biodégradables et compostables au Québec - Rapport sur l’état de la situation. Consulté le 30 mai 2022.
2 Éco Entreprises Québec. Stratégie 1 : l’approvisionnement responsable - quelques définitions. https://ecoconception.eeq.ca/fr-ca/ecoconception/strategies/approvisionnement-responsable ". Consultée le 28 juin 2022.
3 Franklin Associates, A Division of Eastern Research Group (ERG). Life cycle impacts for postconsumer recycled resins : PET, HDPE, and PP. Consulté le 3 mai 2022.
4 Radio-Canada. De grandes entreprises visent la carboneutralité numérique. Consulté le 4 juillet 2022.
5 Greenhouse Gas Protocol. The GHG Emissions Calculation Tool. https://ghgprotocol.org/ghg-emissions-calculation-tool. Consulté le 24 mai 2022.
6 Greenhouse Gas Protocol. The GHG Emissions Calculation Tool. https://ghgprotocol.org/ghg-emissions-calculation-tool. Consulté le 24 mai 2022.
7 Office québécois de la langue française. Vitrine linguistique : fiche terminologique - carboneutre. https://gdt.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/ficheOqlf.aspx?Id_Fiche=26500845 Consulté le 21/07/2022
Achieved in part with consulting services and funding from the Program d'aide à la council industrial research National Research Center of Canada (NRC IRAP).
