What To Do With Old Books? | Repurpose Vs. Recycle?

Hundreds Of Millions Of Books Are Discarded Every Year In The U.S.

What To Do With All Those Used Books?

According to several national and international foundations, including the NWF [i], BIR [ii] and the EPA [iii], it is estimated that approximately 700 million books are discarded within the US

Every. Single. Year.

And who knows how much that number would grow if we included the countless others that are re-gifted, donated or otherwise excavated from people’s homes ever year.

It’s a sad, but necessary truth about the life-cycle of a book in the 21st-century. We say necessary because, considering the roughly 2 BILLION books that get published every year [iv], one has to wonder: Where would we keep all of them if none were to be tossed out?

There’s no debate: Books are sacred. No one will argue with that. Especially not the librarians who do the lion’s share of discarding, or “weeding” as they say in the library biz [v].

Without a doubt, the absolute best option is to donate or gift your used books where possible. True, there are countless resources online for donating used books, but first reach out to local libraries, schools and used bookstores to see if they’d like first dibs!

What about the second best-case scenario though? Would that be recycling? Let’s take a look.

Happily Ever After?

Should I Recycle My Old Books?

Recycling Should Be Our Last Resort.

First off, conventional paper recycling turns these charming objects into, in our opinion, unworthy alternatives like paper plates, napkins, and egg boxes to name a few. And they do so by using a considerable amount of natural resources and hazardous chemicals for de-inking and bleaching of the paper fibers before they can be processed into new paper products. [vi]

Paper is made of cellulose — a repeating chain of glucose molecules — derived from plant cell walls.[vii]

Without diving too deep into science class, basically the longer the glucose chain, the stronger, more flexible, and durable the paper fiber. Outside forces, as well as internal characteristics of the paper fiber, can result in paper degradation or “acid hydrolysis” for all you nerds out there. [viii]

Unfortunately, in many cases, conventional recycling methods consider books that are too old or tattered and/or display water damage, non-viable for recycling due to cellulose degradation of the paper fibers. So as recommended by many municipalities, if “your books or magazines have gotten wet or the paper has turned tan or brown, they should be thrown away with your household trash, as there is no recycling market for this material”. [ix]

And to make matters worse still, some recycling plants simply won’t accept hardcovers unless you go through the trouble of de-binding them and making sure they don’t have any glue leftover on the spines. [x] A fact that dooms even more of these beautiful artifacts to landfills.

Once A Book, Always A Book.

Recycle Vs. Repurpose

At Once A Book, we’ve developed a method for repurposing books into home goods that uses zero toxic chemicals, 10 times less energy, and over 200 times less freshwater than traditional recycling practices. [xi] [xii] [xiii] This means that in one year, repurposing books instead of recycling them could save 1.5 billion megawatt-hours of electricity which is enough to power over 21 million homes for an entire year. [xiv] And the amount of water saved could satisfy the annual consumption of 21,000 US households as well. [xv] Or… if you want to get real cowboy with it, I guess you could fill up the Rose Bowl stadium over 27 times…?

We can also further reduce more landfill by utilizing any old tattered book we find, hardcover, cellulose degradation, water damage, or not. We don’t discriminate!

Lastly, our efforts provide a novel way to maintain a book’s original and beautiful form… as a book! Not as a paper towel. Which is why we like to say:

“Once a book, always a book.” (But also something new!)

Click Here To See Our Current Selection Of Used Books Turned Into Home Goods: Vintage Book Clocks, Book Stereos & More…