Recycling Textbooks – the Gift That Keeps on Giving!

Greenbeaver just finished planting one tree for Earth Day – a beautiful Norway maple. It takes 75,000 trees to print a Sunday Edition of the New York Times! If all of our newspaper was recycled, it would save about 250,000,000 trees each year. If everyone in the U.S. recycled just 1/10 of their newsprint, we would save the estimated equivalent of about 25 million trees a year.

More disturbing facts:

• Every day, Americans buy 62 million newspapers and throw out 44 million. That’s the equivalent of dumping 500,000 trees into a landfill every week.
• The average office worker in the U.S. uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year. That’s 4 million tons of copy paper used annually. Office workers in the US generate approximately 2 pounds of paper and paperboard products every day.
• In the U.S. we use about 85 million tons of paper and paperboard annually.
• Each year, more than 2 billion books, 350 million magazines, and 24 billion newspapers are published.

Paper and paperboard products represent the largest portion of our municipal waste stream (e.g., trash). So what can we do? Recycle!

One ton of recycled paper:

• Saves enough energy to power the average American home for six months.
• Saves 7,000 gallons of water.
• Save 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space.
• Saves 17 trees (35’ tall)
• Reduces greenhouse gas emissions by one metric ton of carbon equivalent (MTCE).

Greenbeaver has the opportunity to work with a company that recycles used textbooks. They collect textbooks published in 2005 or later, and donate them to Books for Africa and the International Book Project. They also sell used textbooks and donate the money to these programs as well. They will pay college organizations (per book) that hold book drives.

Greenbeaver donates all money earned from recycling projects; think of the potential for continuous good this project can bring, particularly if Greenbeaver holds an annual book drive!

We can donate our used textbooks, and we can collect books from outside sources as well. This project truly supports the Greenbeaver mission! We will be working with Better World Books next fall, but we can start collecting books now. We encourage everyone to consider donating their used textbooks for this cause – watch for more information and details regarding drop off sites!