It is crucial to know what to do with old books if you want to keep up with sustainable living and declutter regularly. Actually, this problem pertains not only to books and old magazines but also all kinds of your possessions. While it’s common knowledge that we can sell or give away our clothing or furniture on Craigslist and eBay, how should you dispose of the old books?
Used text books are good for the planet, right? Well that statement seems fairly easy to defend, but when you get down to the hard facts, it really becomes an interesting topic. When proving this hypothesis, the first question I wanted to answer was, “How many books come from one tree?” I soon realized this was not an easy question to answer because books and trees come in all different shapes and sizes. Determined not to give up on my quest for the tree book ratio, I dug deeper for some type of quantitative data to calculate how many average-sized books come from the average-sized tree. Eventually I stumbled across some interesting information. It turns out that most trees are not used for paper. In fact, only the unwanted parts are sent to make paper. The majority of paper is made from recycled materials.