I’m troubled by a number. 320 million.
That’s how many books are thrown away each year according to a research study on book recycling.
What’s troubling is, besides all those trashed books, what amounts to 640,000 tons, is I’m not even sure that number is accurate.
It might be to low and globally it surely is much higher.
You’d probably be surprised that your books are just a few of the million that got moved, today! If you’re excited about donating books, you also are not alone.
We get hundreds of requests and fair amount will mention how great our service is.
These unsolicited kudos also get shared on social media. And we appreciate it and it keeps us going.
Because some days I’ll focus on the other million that didn’t get saved. Still we are shaping this market with your help. And this study was done somewhere between 2009 and 2011 and I do feel that the number of books donated is growing.
However, the actual amount of books that are getting thrown away may also be growing, with downsizing and a slowly aging population not to mention more books getting published.
That’s one of the funny things about the eBook revolution is that it wasn’t a revolution at all. More print books get published every year. Every year sees a new record for the amount of books getting published.
All of the above is confusing to me. As we grow I’d love to support an updated study on this book donation phenomenon that we are connected to.
Even though more books are sold every year, I will add that it is more likely that the book doesn’t get read or if started, not finished.
It does seem that more books are bought than read and whether it be to build a library, give as a gift or show off books you’ve read to guests and others, I think its possible that people are buying more books and reading less.
That will likely feed book donations for many decades to come. Giving books away feels better than having to recycle them. It also shows an effort to be environmentally friendly.
As far as donated books are concerned, they end up in a variety of places. The online venues are important for selling books but charities, libraries and thrift stores make up a lion share of the places they may also end up.
I think an under utilized way is listing them on Craigslist’s free section. We probably gave away more than 10,000 books that way alone. t also becomes a great way to meet friends and volunteers.
But there is no question that book donations will be growing over the next five years and awareness of programs to donate them are growing.
But 320 million! There are solutions of such scale to address that and one way is to help build this Book Driver network. – Matt