# Books into landfill **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 20, 2021, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014 "2021-09-20T19:07:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/21 "2021-09-21T08:24:21Z")
You could give them to a free library, since there won’t even be anyone there to reject your books. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/22 "2021-09-21T12:33:27Z")
I just got rid of a bunch of old textbooks. My town says to remove the hardcovers and put in regular trash, but the rest of the book is recyclable. ---
**Author:** ![Bonum\_Legatum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bonum_legatum/32/6183_2.png) [@Bonum\_Legatum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bonum_Legatum)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/23 "2021-09-21T12:47:32Z")
If you are near a college town, see if there is a branch of the American Association of University Women there, and if they have book sales to raise funds. The one in a big college town near me puts out textbooks in their sales. The others in surrounding suburbs don’t seem to be as interested in them. ---
**Author:** ![md-2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9d8465/32.png) [@md-2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md-2000)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/24 "2021-09-21T12:51:54Z")
I remember an interview with an “archeologist” who spent some time mining city dumps. He mentioned that it was possible back in the day to day the layers of garbage by the layer of old phone books that appeared at a certain time each year. Also mentioned that compacted paper remains well preserved for decades. When My parents went into a home - the biggest problem, besides the grand piano, was the massiv amount of books they had. My nephew looked around - most used bookstores were not interested in any fiction hardcover, except maybe genre stuff like mysteries. Much of the technical stuff gets dated very quickly. (I still have my copy of Dole’s _Habitable Planted for Man_ which discusses Venus likely being tide-locked facing the sun). Anything too technical likely is too much for most local libraries. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 12:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/25 "2021-09-21T12:53:36Z")
None of the books I recycled where hardbacks. ---
**Author:** ![Chefguy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chefguy/32/138_2.png) [@Chefguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chefguy)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/26 "2021-09-21T14:36:34Z")
Before we moved from Anchorage, I took probably 15 boxes of books to the Salvation Army, just unloading them on the dock. What they do with them is unknown to me. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/27 "2021-09-21T15:48:57Z")
The universities near me periodically have textbook drives to collect for other countries. Whenever I was going to Cambodia, the university there would ask for textbooks and explicitly stated that previous editions were fine. Might be worth checking. Women’s shelters, runaway programs, hospitals may be happy to take appropriate books for their residential units. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/28 "2021-09-21T16:33:04Z")
Yes, exactly. The paper is recyclable, but the boards and glue and other parts that make up a hardcover aren’t. Carefully slicing through a number of hardcovers - imagine md-2000’s parents’ library - to trim off the good paper is a long, arduous task that few people are going to bother with. The vast majority will simply dump the books whole, creating the problem. ---
**Author:** ![LurkMeister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3da27b/32.png) [@LurkMeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkMeister)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/29 "2021-09-21T21:45:20Z")
I don’t know if this is still an issue, but I remember decades ago a convention I worked at had a large quantity of program books that we wanted to recycle. In order to do so we had to remove the slick-paper covers from them because the clay content would gum up the regular paper recycling. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/30 "2021-09-21T23:27:42Z")
One of my factory temp jobs was operating a guillotine-style blade to shear the bindings off thousands of bound volumes so the pages could be recycled. ---
**Author:** ![Old\_Wench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ecccb3/32.png) [@Old\_Wench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Old_Wench)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/31 "2021-09-21T23:49:30Z")
If you have a Half Price Books near you, take them there. They won’t give you much but they buy anything. Useless bit of trivia – they only have 3 stores in all of PA and they’re all close to where I live. > **[New & Used Books, Textbooks, Music & Movies | Half Price Books](https://www.hpb.com/home?&size=025&#product-panel-home)** > > Half Price Books has new and used books, textbooks, music, movies and more both online and in stores. We pay cash for books, textbooks, CDs, LPs, videos and DVDs daily. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/32 "2021-09-21T23:53:57Z")
I know it is a Very Bad Idea to let infants and toddlers acquire the notion that tearing pages out of books is permissible, but I’m getting a mental chuckle out of the image of somebody dropping off their old unwanted books at the local day care and letting the kiddies have at it. ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2021, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/33 "2021-09-21T23:58:42Z")
Paper cuts is what would happen. Hands and gums. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2021, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/34 "2021-09-22T00:04:01Z")
I suppose so. Interestingly, I’ve seen quite a few small children ripping a page out of a book before someone could reach them to prevent it, but I’ve never seen a small child get a paper cut. Perhaps because they tend to put their hand on the flat of a page, scrumple it up and pull, rather than fiddling with the edges. ---
**Author:** ![D\_Anconia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@D\_Anconia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/D_Anconia)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2021, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/35 "2021-09-22T03:15:34Z")
That wasn’t my experience with Half Price Books. We took ~10 books in, and they gave us a few dollars for 3 of them (total). The rest they said they were going to dispose of elsewhere, so we took those back. ---
**Author:** ![racer72](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/racer72/32/3075_2.png) [@racer72](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/racer72)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2021, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/36 "2021-09-22T15:58:10Z")
I worked for a recycling center for a few weeks during a labor dispute with my employer about 25 years ago. Me and another person spent 4 hours a day separating hardbound book covers from the paper pages. We used a bandsaw to cut off the binding, toss the covers and binding into a big trash bin and the pages were tossed onto a conveyor belt. Saw a lot of new technical books with price tags of $300 or more. Most were from used book stores that were getting rid of inventory that didn’t sell. Someone once found a hollowed out book with a couple thousand dollars in it. I found some empty hollowed out books but all were empty. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [September 22, 2021, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/37 "2021-09-22T16:02:27Z")
A brewery near me has a small lending library (fifty or so books). Every so often I take a book home with me. I return it once I’ve read it and usually bring a book from home to add to their collection. ---
**Author:** ![Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/do_not_taunt/32/2968_2.png) [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Do_Not_Taunt)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2021, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/38 "2021-09-27T18:27:51Z")
What is a hard cover made out of, that makes it unrecyclable? I assumed it was just a dense layer of cardboard/paper glued together, perhaps incorrectly. ETA: am picturing something like this: [![](https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5655722/il_fullxfull.273086007.jpg) ](https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5655722/il_fullxfull.273086007.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![Banksiaman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banksiaman/32/3334_2.png) [@Banksiaman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banksiaman)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2021, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/39 "2021-09-27T21:45:55Z")
> [@md-2000](#): > > I remember an interview with an “archeologist” who spent some time mining city dumps. He mentioned that it was possible back in the day to day the layers of garbage by the layer of old phone books that appeared at a certain time each year. Also mentioned that compacted paper remains well preserved for decades. Real archaeologists do this, so maybe quote marks superfluous. And you remember correctly - modern papers are extremely resilient to decay in anaerobic environments. A fat wodge of even very thin pages, like phone book paper, in a landfill will outlast us all. While the decline of print media will ultimately reduce that component of new landfill waste it will probably not compost to a lusher, greener future. It will just sit there, smelling of damp for a very long time until crushed by geology into coal. Or diamonds if you’re lucky. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 27, 2021, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014/40 "2021-09-27T22:18:22Z")
> [@Do\_Not\_Taunt](#): > > What is a hard cover made out of, that makes it unrecyclable? It’s the binding. That mass of cardboard, glue, (sometimes actual stitching) and every single page all in a single strip. Imagine trying to run that through even an industrial-strength shredder. As **racer72** noted, you have to literally saw the binding off to separate and recycle the pages. That’s a lot of labor for something that fetches [maybe $30-$40 per ton.](https://resource-recycling.com/recycling/2020/12/15/scrap-paper-plastic-and-metal-prices-all-rise-in-december/) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/books-into-landfill/951014.md?page=3)