Borders' Book Dumpster

by Cameron Scott · 2010-01-21 16:05:00 UTC
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UPDATE (Jan. 22): Borders has announced a partnership with Gifts in Kind to donate "non-returnable" books. But since the bookseller hasn't agreed to recycle or donate all books, our petition stands.

Our economy gets better and it gets worse, but its capacity for waste remains unchanged.

Due, in part, to the faltering economy, Borders Books will close some 200 locations of Waldenbooks by the end of the month. They will take the books off the shelves, tear off their covers so they can't be resold, and ship them back to the warehouse to be trashed.

The news comes from Borders employees who wanted to reveal their company to be as wasteful as the recently chastened H&M. Even so, the practice is standard operating procedure in the publishing industry. The industry has been slow to adopt even the most common-sense greening initiatives.

It's not even clear that the books will be recycled.

Then again, there's a reason that re-use comes before recycle in the popular three-word motto: It's less wasteful.

And particularly in a time of financial hardship where municipal libraries are being forced to reduce their hours and stop buying new books, many are calling for Borders to donate the Waldenbooks leftovers to libraries.

Of course, the problem isn't just Borders; it's systemic. Our fetishistic worship of copyright laws leads us to believe that depriving publishing houses of a few cents of revenue is worse than taking acres of virgin forests — not to mention hours of reading pleasure — and tossing them in the dumpster.

Borders employees see it differently, and have formed a Facebook page to pressure the company to donate the books.

Photo credit: Tell BORDERS DO NOT DUMPSTER BOOKS

Cameron Scott writes The Thin Green Line blog at SFGate (San Francisco Chronicle).
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