IPE Book Recycling Program Expands

Most readers of this blog are familiar with the IPE Book Recycling program that takes place around finals week each semester. In cooperation with ReadingTree.org, a local NGO, the IPE progam seeks donations of unwanted books of all kinds. Puget Sound students, faculty and staff have donated more than 10,000 books in the last four years!

ReadingTree takes the books you donate and sorts them into three groups. Some books are too badly damaged to be useful to anyone -- these books are recycled responsibly. A small number of books have a significant market value -- they are sold on the internet. The money raised from books sales is used to distribute the rest of the books to reading programs in the United States and to community and school libraries in Less Developed Countries.

Focusing on book donations during finals week (when students look for good ways to recycle out-of-date textbooks) has been very successful, but what if you want to donate a book at other times? ReadingTree and the University have found a solution to this problem. A secure permanent recycling station has been installed at the South end of Wheelock Student Center near the parking lot (see photo). Now you have no excuse. Don't send that unwanted book to the landfill. Recycle it.

The IPE Program would like to thank the following staff members for their help making this new collection system possible: Barbara Racine, Sarah Comstock and James Vance.

We'd also like to thank these IPE students (and UPS crew team members) for their hard work in December to publicize the book recycling project and haul heavy boxes of books to the collection points: Laura Thomas ('10), Ryan Donahue ('10), Amory Genter ('10), Dash Gordon ('11) and Alex Mann ('11).

And, of course, thanks to everyone who has donated books to the program.