Made by Humans Staple Free Stapler
By
The Made by Humans Staple Free Stapler.
Im trying to mix things up a little bit so we will be taking a break from the usual office supplies such as pens and notebooks, to take a look at the Made by Humans Staple Free Stapler. I picked this up on my trip to Boston when I stopped at a great little store called Black Ink with lots of office supplies and stationery type items. I forgot to mention this store on my Office Supply Geek’s Tour of Boston post, so Ill have to update that one to include them.
The Staple Free Stapler in its environmentally friendly package.
The Staple Free Stapler really goes a step beyond your usual “hey lets save some paper” or “recycle that toner” thought that most of us have, and it targets what is proabably at best an after thought for most…the staple. Sure staples are small, but they are made of metal, and they do require fossile fuels to manufacture and ship, and they do add weight to pamphlets and booklets that are put together and shipped. For those reasons I think it is great that someone took the step of trying to reduce some of the waste and strain put on our environment due to their use.
Instructions and diagram of how the Staple Free Stapler works from the bottom of the package.
Basically, the Staple Free Stapler cuts a hole through the paper in an upsidedown “U” shape that acts as a tab which slides through another lower horizontally placed cut made in the same punching action when you press down on the stapler. The above image from the package shows a good step by step of how to use it, but if you can use a regular stapler then this should be a no brainer…if you CANT use a regular stapler, well then Im not sure how you figured out how to fire up that computer and get to this point here, but you may want to go back and give that regular stapler another try now. 
Front side results of the Staple Free Stapler in action.
If you look at the upper left corner of the image above, you can see the results on the front of a stack of 4 sheets of paper when fastened with the Staple Free Stapler. As you can see, it creates a nice clean cut and tucks the tab into the paper leaving no scrap paper, and your papers are now securely fastened. The next photo shows the back side of the same stack of papers (look in the upper right hand corner now) to hopefully give you the full picture of how this cool little stapler works.
Back side of the stapled stack of papers with the results in the upper right corner.
Like many environmentally friendly office supplies, one is usually left to wonder about the quality or the performance of the item, but so far this little guy has held up pretty well, even after I blatantly ignored the “up to 4 sheets” suggestion and did multiple tests on 8 sheets. Im not sure what the long term outlook would be if one used this for more than 4 sheets on a regular basis in high volume, but I can tell you that the 10-12 times I did it on 8 sheets, it did not seem to stress the device and I did not have to apply more than a very slight bit of extra pressure.
One benefit of this stapler that is not related to its environmentally friendly qualities is that as a guy with short finger nails, I can almost NEVER get staples out of a stack of papers once it has been fastened, but with this stapler that is totally not the case. It is very easy to just loosen up the tucked in tab and slide it out so you can have full access to each individual sheet of paper….not quite as easy to put back together again, but I still appreciate not having sharp metal edges jammed under my fingernails. Overall this is a nice little stapler that is probably worth the $8ish or so you can usually find them for, Amazon.com has them here if you are looking for something to add to hit that free shipping limit. You are not going to save the planet by purchasing one, but its just one more small thing that everyone can do and it all adds up. Happy stapling!
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I’ve been using this device for about 6 months and haven’t had as good of an experience. When using on > 4 pages, it binds up now and pulls apart some of the connection when removing it from the pages. Works well with 4 pages and under, but I found that many times I need to staple more and need to revert to a metal stapler.
If you are a < 4 page stapler, I agree this is a good "green" solution.
I don’t think that Milton from Office Space would appreciate this very much.
“I believe you have my Swingline Stapler….”
Nice informative post on an non-conventional stapler. I think I have spotted similar devices in bright colors and in cute mascot designs a few years back at Kinokuniya Stationery stores. They might have been $15 or so, but that was probably paying for the royalty fees of using characters like Hello Kitty to decorate them.
Hi,
Ok I must admit I we have one stapler on each desk and when we file things we often have to re-dig the files out and add sheets to the file.
Yes this means either undoing the staple or just adding an extra staple on the document.
It would interesting to see how this staple free stapler would cope with this – presumably we would make another hole next to the previous one?
@Chad – Thanks for sharing your experiences with it. Im always apprehensive when I give a thumbs up/down to a product just because I know Im only a sample size of one, and I might use the product differently than someone else, or I might just get one that is either made better or worse than the rest of the same items in a particular product line.
@Tom – There is some history on those red Swingline staplers, I actually tried to get an exact replica from someone who was selling them in the past. The ones that Swingline makes now are not exactly the same as what was in the movie. Im going to see if I can track down the seller of the exact replicas again to get one to review.
@Alberto – You are probably right, once you add any kind of licensing cost to an item, the price can really go up pretty quickly.
@OSG & @Tom:
Little known fact: Swingline didn’t make a red stapler until after the movie came out. When they realized they had an opportunity for free publicity, they created a “limited edition.”
@Mark Keating – The funny thing is that you cant get the actual model of the red stapler from Swingline that was used in the movie. The model that they mass produced was a different version than the movie one…but a bunch of years back I found a movie prop guy on eBay who was taking the right model in black and completely breaking them down, then painting them red, putting the labels back on and reassembling them. They were AWESOME, I ended up buying two as gifts because they were so perfect.
This was about 8-9 years ago, and I emailed him recently but never heard back.