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Some may see poetry in staplers but the Practical Environmentalist sees pollution: "Staples are wasteful and have a huge carbon footprint. The most common type of office staple is made with galvanized steel—that's steel that's been re-heated and coated with a layer of zinc. As you can imagine, this double heating process is a pretty energy intensive task. From mining and transporting ore, to smelting and forming the staples one at a time from wire spools, staples gobble up energy at every step of their production and use. This energy use causes millions of tons of pollution. Since staples are tiny, they rarely get recycled. In fact, they often increase the cost of recycling paper because they contaminate the recycling stream and can jam machinery. In paper recycling centers, the staples are pulled from the line by powerful magnets and screening filters, and then they're thrown away as a recycling byproduct."
Fear not because TreeHugger.com has a solution: go stapless with a virtual stapler: "Instead of using the tiny pieces of metal that add up to lots of waste, this ingenious little device joins your papers by punching a small, neat hole in your documents and folding the remaining flaps together for a secure binding. No paper is torn off of your sheets and there's nothing to toss out or pry apart with your fingernails."
Then again, if you'd prefer something with some history. behind it, you can go old school with the durable paperclip.
