Recycle Your Books

The IPE program in partnership with ReadingTree.org is proud to bring back thebookrecycling project to our campus. Puget Sound students, faculty and staff recycled more than 10,000 books through this program since 2005.

ReadingTree collects books and recycles them to reading programs for low income students in the United States and to establish community libraries indeveloping countries. This keeps the books out of the landfill and recycles them to people who need them.

Usually the high cost of shipping books abroad dooms unwanted books to the landfill. The ReadingTree program sells some of the books it collects to raise money for shipping and handling costs. This makes the program economically sustainable -- a great advantage. The fraction ofbooks that are so badly damaged as to be unusable are shredded and used to make recycled paper products. So the program supports environmental sustainability, too. And, of course, it gets books to people in the U.S. and less developed countries who could not afford to buy them.

Our project focuses on recycling surplus or unwanted books of all kinds. There are a lot of books that are discarded every year – we’d like to get those books into the recycling pipeline and keep them out of the landfill.

Watch for book recycling signs and recycling bins in WSC near the book buy-back counter.

Thanks to the IPE majors on the UPS crew team (and especially to Laura Thomas and Dash Gordon) who volunteered to shoulder the burden of this program!

P.S. You can donate books at any time using the big blue and yellow book recycle station at the south side of WSC, near the outside entrance to the Pizza Cellar.

Book Recycling Project Returns

The IPE program in partnership with ReadingTree.org is proud to bring back the book recycling project to our campus. Puget Sound students, faculty and staff recycled more than 8000 books through this program since 2005.

ReadingTree collects books and recycles them to reading programs for low income students in the United States and to establish community libraries in developing countries. This keeps the books out of the landfill and recycles them to people who need them.

Usually the high cost of shipping books abroad dooms unwanted books to the landfill. The ReadingTree program sells some of the books it collects to raise money for shipping and handling costs. This makes the program economically sustainable -- a great advantage. The fraction of books that are so badly damaged as to be unusable are shredded and used to make recycled paper products. So the program supports environmental sustainability, too. And, of course, it gets books to people in the U.S. and less developed countries who could not afford to buy them.

Our project focuses on recycling surplus or unwanted books of all kinds. There are a lot of books that are discarded every year – we’d like to get those books into the recycling pipeline and keep them out of the landfill.

Watch for book recycling signs and recycling bins in WSC and other campus locations. The collection bins will be in place by Monday, May 4. All of the collection areas will be in operation through finals week.

Thanks to the IPE majors on the UPS crew team (and especially to Laura Thomas) who volunteered to shoulder the burden of this program!

P.S. You can donate books at any time using the big blue and yellow book recycle station at the south side of WSC, near the outside entrance to the Pizza Cellar.

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.

Book Recycling Project Returns

The IPE program in partnership with ReadingTree.org is proud to bring back the book recycling project to our campus. Puget Sound students, faculty and staff recycled more than 7000 books through this program since 2005.

ReadingTree collects books and recycles them to reading programs for low income students in the United States and to establish community libraries in developing countries. This keeps the books out of the landfill and recycles them to people who need them.

Usually the high cost of shipping books abroad dooms unwanted books to the landfill. The ReadingTree program sells some of the books it collects to raise money for shipping and handling costs. This makes the program economically sustainable -- a great advantage. The fraction of books that are so badly damaged as to be unusable are shredded and used to make recycled paper products. So the program supports environmental sustainability, too. And, of course, it gets books to people in the U.S. and less developed countries who could not afford to buy them.

Our project focuses on recycling surplus or unwanted books of all kinds. There are a lot of books that are discarded every year – we’d like to get those books into the recycling pipeline and keep them out of the landfill.

Watch for book recycling signs and recycling bins in WSC and other campus locations. The collection bins will be in place by Monday, 12/15. All of the collection areas will be in operation through finals week.

Thanks to the IPE majors on the UPS crew team (and especially to Laura Thomas) who volunteered to shoulder the burden of this program!