Thwarted Sustainability

Trying to be "green" can be frustrating sometimes. I had wanted to buy a special pen to do my workbook with. I love pens, and colors of ink, and I wanted something that was comfortable to write with. So I discovered my new favorite pen, the Pentel EnerGel retractable pen with violet ink. It just flows across the page and the violet ink makes me feel good. Plus I felt good from a green perspective because it was refillable. I throw a lot of plastic away with pens, so I figured refillable was a good thing. I buy the pen (a 2-pack) and very quickly blow through the ink on one - I've been writing a lot lately. So I start looking for refills. Turns out that no area store I can find seems to have the refills for this in violet. Black and blue, but no violet. I want violet. I don't ask for much, and I want pretty violet ink. :) So I start looking online. Nobody seems to have that either. Except the Pentel store. Here I'm thinking I can buy a box in bulk of refills. But they sell them individually. The price is right, but now I'm paying for shipping, all the shipping packaging, and the fuel to ship it FedEx Home Delivery to me (the only way they send it). And, I will almost guarantee you that when they arrive on Saturday, all 12 of them will be individually wrapped in their own little shrink-wrap or plastic packages on cardboard, which is more waste. At this point it's probably more economical to just buy more pens and toss the plastic in the landfill. I know it's just a simple little thing, but it seems common these days - you'll make an effort to fix something rather than toss it and find out it'll cost 5 times what it costs to buy a brand new one. We've become such a disposable society, and it makes me sad. I guess all I can do is continue to trudge along and make the best decisions I can make for now.