Notebooks stick with us through it all: furious note-taking as you try to keep up with lectures, late-night songwriting sessions, and pages of written rants. If you can write or draw it, notebooks can hold it—and sustainable notebooks can also hold our concerns for Mother Earth.
If you love using physical notebooks (apps just aren’t the same, you know?), it’s especially important to consider their ecological impact. Fortunately, we could fill a whole page with all the zero waste office tips and supplies out there—including eco-friendly journals and notebooks just waiting for your ideas.
To choose the best sustainable notebook brands, we considered materials and manufacturing (hint: recycled and tree-free paper get a big tick).
Our new Brand Rating System will soon expand our considerations to 22 different critera covering everthing from climate action and deforestation to waste and packaging. We jotted down all the details in our explainer here, but check back for updates to these brands after we run them through it.
We independently research all featured brands and we ask them to confirm their claims. In many cases we personally review recommended products. This post contains affiliate links which means we may earn a commission if you buy something. Learn more here.
Eco-friendly Journals You’re Bound To Love
Decomposition offers the classic composition notebook in a much more sustainable form, complete with 100% post-consumer recycled paper and a college ruled design.
Made from stone and claiming the title of first climate positive notebook, Agood Company’s notebooks are beautiful, durable, and setting a standard for sustainability in paper goods.
Index: Sustainable Notebooks & Journals
- Decomposition Jump to section
- 1environ Jump to section
- Agood Company Jump to section
- Dingbats* Jump to section
- By Amber & Rose Jump to section
- Environotes Jump to section
- White Dragon Paper Jump to section
Decomposition
About Decomposition’s Eco-Friendly Composition Notebooks
Price Range: $6–$11
Made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper, Decomposition notebooks are a sustainable version of the classic composition notebook.
All Decomposition notebooks are printed with soy ink and come with either lined or grid paper. Choose between sewn or spiral notebooks in pocket, XL, and standard college-ruled sizes.
If you’re more of a binder person, they also offer 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper in loose-leaf form.
About Decomposition
A family-owned and operated company founded over 70 years ago, Decomposition strives to make eco-friendly, whimsical paper products designed to be both sustainable and lovely to use.
They also offer their eco-friendly notebooks wholesale for retailers who want to sell their products in store.
Not only is their product line 100% recycled, but it’s made using energy from recaptured landfill gasses.
1environ
About 1environ’s Eco-friendly Recycled Paper Notebooks
Price Range: $19
Made with acid-free recycled old waste paper (created from cotton rags), 1environ’s handmade sustainable journals are expertly crafted and beautiful to look at.
Featuring a hand-stitched cotton binding, integrated cotton ribbon bookmark, and a paper pocket at the back, 1environ’s notebooks come in an A5 size with an option for a black or marbled recycled canvas cover.
On the whole, they’re vegan, plastic-free, and contain no added harmful chemicals.
About 1environ
1environ never uses plastic in their packaging. When their products absolutely require a protective covering for shipping and stocking, they use a vegetable starch based film that is 100% biodegradable.
1environ is ISO 45001 certified and details their handmade paper process on their website. We’re not certain of specific details regarding labor conditions for artisans, but will be reaching out to get more information.
Agood Company
About Agood Company’s Eco-Friendly Dotted Journals
Price Range: $30–$36
Boasting the first climate-positive notebook in the world, Agood Company’s stone paper notebooks are setting new standards in the sustinable journals world.
Their stone paper is made from recycled stone byproducts from construction and factories, and is tear resistant, water-resistant, and durable.
Printed with non-toxic soy ink in dotted, lined, and blank styles, the notebooks contain no wood pulp, water, or toxic chemicals, and are vegan and cruelty-free.
But are stone notebooks eco-friendly?
Yes! While stone paper doesn’t biodegrade since it doesn’t contain carbon matter, it is PIDC lab tested and certified as photodegradable, meaning it breaks down without adverse effects when exposed to light.
Their notebooks are Cradle to Cradle and CE-certified, and come with a stone paper cover sleeve that doubles as a bookmark.
Don’t forget one of their eco-friendly pens to help you fill the pages!
About Agood Company
Certified B Corp Agood Company puts each product they produce—stationery, cell phone cases, fashion, and more—through a rigorous design process, requiring them to be either biodegradable, recyclable, or completely circular.
Their suppliers have to sign their Supplier Code of Conduct, and they provide a detailed impact report to tell you exactly what’s going on under the hood. Plus, they’re ISO 14001 and 9001 certified.
Products ship in packaging made from recycled and recyclable materials, and they plant trees in Zambia through WeForest to combat carbon emissions.
Also available on EarthHero.
Dingbats*
About Dingbats*’ Eco-Friendly Notebooks
Price Range: $17–$35
Don’t be such a Dingbat! Or maybe, do?
Dingbats* specializes in vegan journals and notebooks made out of FSC-certified paper.
Their Wildlife and Earth journal lines are covered in PU (plastic) vegan faux leather, and their Pro journal has a recycled textile cover.
Technically, these are biodegradable notebooks, but while PU is a less dangerous type of plastic and theirs is engineered to break down in about 10 years (much faster than traditional PVC covers), don’t confuse biodegradable with compostable. You still can’t toss these in your home composter, or even an industrial one. But you can remove the pages and compost those!
The Pro line features covers made of a cotton/linen blend.
Their Wildlife & Earth collections have the biggest size range, available in A4+, A5+, A6, and A6+ sizes, with dot grid, lined, grid, and blank notebook variations. The pages of both lines feature a coating made from potato starch that prevents any ink from seeping or bleeding through.
About Dingbats*
Dingbats* is part of SKB, a company from Lebanon established in 1800, so they’ve known paper for five generations.
The brand is committed to being 100% vegan, and is EU V-Label certified, meaning that they don’t use any animal-based adhesives. They’re the only notebook brand to bear this vegan certification.
If you live on the tea side of the pond, 2% of the revenue for the sustainable notebooks UK readers buy is donated to the World Wildlife Fund UK and they plant one tree for every order placed outside the UK.
By Amber & Rose
About By Amber & Rose’s Eco-Friendly Cotton Paper Notebooks
Price Range: $9–$60
Making sustainable journals UK scribblers will especially appreciate (yay, in country shipping!), By Amber & Rose is a British Etsy store with a big impact.
By Amber & Rose’s notebooks are made from khadda paper, a handmade paper that uses recycled cotton leftover from India’s garment industry.
Each notebook is hand-bound and highly durable.
While the covers are primarily leather (of which we don’t know details about processing), they also offer notebooks with covers made from upcycled saris, which use unbleached cotton that isn’t processed with chemicals.
About By Amber & Rose
Based out of the UK, By Amber & Rose considers themselves a fair trade company, regularly visiting their suppliers to ensure ethical standards.
The paper, for instance, is made by a charity in India that advocates and promotes women’s education and equitable social standing.
Producing not only notebooks, but recycled newspaper pencils, office accessories, and stationary supplies as well, By Amber & Rose strives to only use sustainable, ethically-sourced or recycled materials in their products.
Environotes
About Environotes’ Eco-Friendly Spiral Notebooks
Price Range: $9–$21
Environotes makes affordable, eco-friendly notebooks for school and beyond.
Their made-in-the-USA recyclable, sustainable, ethical journals come in a multitude of variations—size, number of subjects and color—so you can have a different notebook for every subject.
Their BioBase spiral-bound notebooks line are made from 30% sugarcane agricultural waste, and 70% post-consumer waste. The Recycled line has a minimum of 30% post-consumer recycled paper.
As a general rule, all of their notebooks have college rules and margins.
About Environotes
Around since 1865, Environotes’ parent company Roaring Spring is based in Pennsylvania and makes a variety of paper products, and office, art, and school supplies.
They offer custom notebooks for schools and businesses if you want to get eco-friendly branded notebooks wholesale.
White Dragon Paper
About White Dragon Paper’s Sustainable Recycled Notebooks
Price Range: $2.50–$175
Made with love in Wisconsin, White Dragon Paper’s notebooks feature handmade acid-free paper made from recycled waste.
Their colorful covers are made from recycled materials or leather—and since we don’t know if this leather is recycled, vegetable tanned, or traditional, we recommend opting for recycled models.
The paper comes in lined and blank pages, perfect for sustainable bullet journals, and the notebooks come in a variety of sizes, from matchbook to a larger sketchbook size.
Because the paper is handmade, there will be some variation in texture and positioning, adding to its charm.
About White Dragon Paper
White Dragon Paper is an owner-operated small business that started as a basement hobby. Now they supply not only handcrafted notebooks, but also small-batch and whole-sale sheets of paper to artists and designers.
Their orders are shipped in biodegradable and upcycled materials, including biodegradable PLA bags made from plants.
They also offer eco-friendly custom notebooks if you want your journal to have extra personal flair.
Why Choose A Sustainable Journal?
Are notebooks eco-friendly? They’re made of paper, which is natural, aren’t they?
Yes, but that’s not really a good thing. The wood pulp and paper industry consumes 33-40% of all industrial wood, globally.
This means that regular paper comes rife with potential ecological and ethical concerns.
In some areas (like China), as much as 76-80% of logging for paper and textile products is illegal, according to Greenpeace.
Even paper products bearing the official seal of sustainable forestry certifications (i.e. FSC, SFI, and PEFC) have no guarantees they didn’t come from illegally or irresponsibly logged forests.
The paper may look white, but greenwashing is a (spiral) bound.
Then there’s the potentially harmful chemical additives and processing methods to consider, like the chlorine bleaching of pages. Runoff from these manufacturing efforts leads to toxic environmental bioaccumulation.
It can be hard to find notebooks to fit into our everyday lives that are also sustainably sourced, but it’s not impossible.
Tree-based paper can be sustainably sourced with the right oversight—but given how difficult it is to determine this, it’s always best to opt for recycled pulp and other tree-free notebooks.
Since the paper industry is such a big consumer of wood, one of the ways we can protect our outdoor spaces is by using our consumer demand to show that we want environmentally conscious notebooks and journals made from sustainable and non-virgin materials.
A Note(book) On Moleskine
Ah, Moleskine. The cult classic hardcover notebook beloved by so many.
While Moleskine didn’t make this list for sustainability, if you’re a diehard for the brand, here is what you need to know.
Moleskine has at least a portion of their products certified by the FSC, but not all of them. They encourage the recycling of their notebooks after use, though the covers aren’t recyclable and have to be removed.
The brand is currently working on a carbon reduction plan as guided by the Paris agreements and overseen by a third-party auditor. Additionally, Moleskine and their affiliates are all part of Sedex, and 96% of their suppliers are ISO14001 certified. All third parties are required to adhere to Moleskine’s Code of Ethics.
So, are Moleskine notebooks ethical?
Well, it’s hard to say. Some of Moleskine’s products include leather, and the website doesn’t provide information about their sourcing practices. They also don’t provide detail on the factories that produce their products, nor the people who make them.
In short, Moleskine is making steps in the right direction, but they aren’t quite up to snuff for us to consider them sustainable. We’re hoping they will get more transparent in the future.
If you like the look of moleskin journals, eco-friendly alternatives include those made of biodegradable vegan leather such as cork.