Books4Paper – Recycling books into paper

Mission:

Make sure that books do not end up in a landfill

Nuts and Bolts:

We try our best to reuse as many books as possible and have a number of programs that help to facilitate this process.  There does come a time in a book’s life cycle that it is either too worn out or is no longer relevant.  At this point we work with recycling facilities to bring the book to the next stage in its life cycle.  The recycling process is not the most optimal, but is better than the alternative of landfills.  The process does involve chemicals and has an environmental impact on the earth in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and corrosive chemicals, but to our knowledge a completely earth-friendly process does not yet exist.  The  current recycling process strips the books of their ink and turns them into a pulp that can be recycled back into paper.

Impact:

Over 500 metric tons of books have been saved from landfills and turned back into paper to date!