About Auspen

Did you know that in Australia alone, there are around 40,000,000 white board markers thrown out by schools, universities and other learning institutions each year?

When the founders of Auspen® learnt about this, it sparked the idea of the refillable marker pen. That idea turned into AusPen, a small Australian business (based in Melbourne) serving customers all around the world.

Auspen is committed to sustainability and environmental responsibility. AusPen wants to challenge our culture’s throwaway mentality and re-use, re-fill and re-cycle instead.

How Auspen Products Are Manufactured

AusPen was born from a determination to minimize waste. The initial idea for refillable marker pens was followed up by extensive academic and industrial research. The founders have extensive experience in industrial design and manufacturing, and decided that Auspen would:

• utilise responsible manufacturing methods and recyclable materials to manufacture our products.
• make products that are safe, cost effective and top quality.

We think we offer the best quality whiteboard markers in the marketplace - for example, we use aluminium for the pen barrels (for durability) and a special nib design (so they last for many refills). On top of that, because they are refillable, they cost less and are better for the environment.

Every component in our markers has been pitted against competitors in the open market, and then improved. We are proud of our product. We like to keep your best interests, and the environment’s best interests, at heart.

After coming up with the idea of refillable markers, we looked at the existing products, and asked ourselves “how can we make the best markers even better?”. Here are some of the main decisions we made.

• Refillable: This was our original idea. Surprisingly, nobody has copied us. Most people think ‘disposable = cheap’ - what we found is that it’s the other way around. Disposable costs more and is terrible for the environment. Go figure.
• Colorful: We figured people wanted brighter colors to use. For teachers and lecturers who use marker pens a lot, why not use purple, green and orange as well as red, black and blue? So we had to do some work to come up with inks that were bright and didn’t fade quickly.
• Quality: Refilling marker pens means they need to last a lot longer. And the carry case as well. So we used aluminium for pen barrels to maximise pen life, and heat moulded (HDPE) polyethylene for the carry case to make them tough. Before we released the product, we did extensive product trials in Australian schools and centres of higher learning, and based on test results, improved our product further.
• Environmental impact: We decided to use recylclable aluminium for our barrels, and to minimise use of plastic. We decided that while the carry case seems to be extra plastic, it helps stop pens being lost and so contributes to a net reduction in resource usage.
• Health and safety: Ok, you aren’t at serious risk from dropping a marker pen on your foot. But did you know that many inks use Xylene so they stick better to the white board? Xylene is a really nasty chemical, and we decided it was better for the health of our customers if we steered well clear of it. We even had our non-xylene ink reviewed and approved for compliance with EEC requirements.

We think our markers speak for themselves, and that AusPen markers and AusPen ink represent the most economical, environmentally responsible and highest quality whiteboard marker you will encounter.

Refill not landfill!