Sadly even putting books into local recycling schemes or charity shops doesn’t necessarily mean that the books are reused or recycled.

Many councils across the country are now building new incinerators. Knowing the public would be opposed to more incinerators they are being labelled Energy Reclamation Plants. The plants are under private contract to burn waste and produce electricity – this means that they have to operate at full capacity to make a profit – burning as much combustible waste as possible including plastic and paper products. Our local council, which is planning to allow such a plant to be built here, has large penalty clauses in it’s contract with the incinerator company that guarantee the council will supply enough burnable material to allow the company to run at a profit. If the council does not meet these targets it is fined. This situation does not encourage the councils to recycle materials appropriately.

Over 50% of books given to charities are unsellable – usually because of poor condition - these are sorted out and the books that are to be sold are given a “sell-by-date”. This is where the date the book was put out for sale is written inside the cover – it is then given a certain time to sell – if it has not sold within this time it too is thrown away with the damaged books.

To find out just how many high street charity shops are recycling their unsold and damaged books, Green Dragon carried out a poll. Out of the one hundred shops asked in the local area only one recycled unsold books. The rest still sent their books to landfill or for incineration!

Green Dragon does not operate in this way – we guarantee that books are either re-used or, if badly damaged, properly recycled.

Green Dragon operates a successful local collection service. Contact us for details.

The UK produces over 27 million tonnes of household rubbish every year - of which 80% ends up being incinerated or put into landfill sites. 5 million tonnes of this is paper [1] – including magazines, newspapers and books. There is no reason why these couldn’t be recycled, or, as in the case of good books, they can be re-read again and again.

It is true that much (but not all) paper is now sourced from “sustainable plantations”, but the problem with these is that as the demand for paper products soars, so more plantations are planted and ancient woodlands and habitat are destroyed to make way for them.

Recycling waste paper saves up to 70% of the energy that would normally be used to make the same quantity of paper from newly cut trees. Compared to the same made from virgin pulp, each tonne of paper made from recycled material saves in the manufacturing process the following:

• 31,804 litres (7000 gallons) of water
• 4,200 kilowatt hours of electricity (enough to power a home for half the year!)
• 9.72 kilos (20lbs) reduction in carbon dioxide emissions
• 18.14kilos (40lbs) reduction in nitrogen emissions [2]

[1] The Paper Federation of Great Britain
[2] Wastewatch UK

Green Dragon is a volunteer project run as a not-for-profit organisation.
Office: Community Base, 113 Queens Road, Brighton, BN1 3XG