If you’re old enough to be reading a blog about manufacturing, you’re probably also old enough to remember one of the most well-known Mr. Rogers segments of all time—the tour of the crayon factory where we, America’s curious schoolchildren, got to watch the Crayola people make a batch of yellow crayons. It was pretty cool. Watch the segment below to get nostalgic, but mostly to remind yourself what the crayon manufacturing process is like—or rather, was like when this episode, How People Make Crayons aired in 1979.

Now, let’s talk about Crayola’s recent solar energy project—the product of which is that Crayola will now be manufacturing 1/3 of their total crayons using solar power—that’s about 1 billion crayons every year. It’s interesting what Crayola is doing, but the thing that caught my attention about this video is the part at the end where it shows the manufacturing process—the current process—of some green crayons.

It was interesting to me that the machines are almost identical to the one in the 1979 video… if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, I guess. But then again, there are some noticeable differences. The molding process is far more automated (no more double bucket guy!) but there’s still human labor involved… more than I actually expected.

While many manufacturing processes in many industries are becoming more automated, the demand for electricity in producing each product goes up and the demand for human capital goes down. Simply, this is bad for the environment (assuming the electricity is coming from unclear sources) and the jobs market (assuming people used to do the jobs that the machines do now.) In any case, it’s refreshing to see that companies like Crayola have addressed both issues by creating jobs in the greening construction industry while also addressing environmental concerns by implementing green power solutions. Hopefully other companies will follow Crayola’s lead—and perhaps we can move forward with even cleaner energy.