Thrift Booking and the Environmental Impact of Print Books

For as long as I can remember, I have never had an issue with “hand-me-down” clothes or clothes bought at a thrift shop. Not because I was thinking about the environment, but because I hate shopping. If someone gave me clothes that they no longer wanted or needed, I was ecstatic. They were new to me and free and I didn’t even have to leave my house to get them. As I entered my 20’s though, I started to be more environmentally conscious. I started recycling and began to want to live a more minimalist lifestyle, but I wasn’t to the point that I was researching anything or realizing just how big of an impact I had on this earth. I knew about carbon emissions and our carbon footprint and climate change, but I never looked into just how much of our things end up in landfills or in the ocean and how those affect ecosystems, our water, the air, etc. In fact, it wasn’t until recently that I started researching these things and I’ve never been more grateful that I never cared much about whether my clothes were brand new or not. However, although I thought about writing an article on thrift shopping and the environment, I decided that I wanted to dive into a part of thrift shopping that we don’t often hear about, and that is thrift booking and the environmental impact of print books.

Everyone who knows me knows that I love to read. I am an avid reader. When I was little, I read basically the entire series of Junie B. Jones, The Boxcar Children, Trixie Belden, and The Hardy Boys. I had so many free kids’ pizzas from Pizza Hut, for filling out my Book-it sheet, that I was practically made of it. Now, twenty-one years later, I still love to read just as much. However, I never considered that something as simple as a book, could have a harmful impact on the earth. In fact, the creation of one book alone uses “two kilowatt hours of fossil fuels and approximately 7.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide,”and, in the U.S., more than 100 million trees have been harvested for the book and newspaper publishing industry combined. Not only this, but “books and newspapers produce 153 billion gallons of wastewater annually,” making the publishing industry “responsible for 11 percent of freshwater consumed in industrial nations,” as well as “the biggest industrial water user.” Also, the ink used for printing in these industries “releases volatile organic compounds into the atmosphere” and “creates a sizeable carbon footprint.” To be more specific, “ink is estimated to make up 1 percent of the emissions of each printed product” and “books have the highest per-unit carbon footprint in the publishing sector, as well as significant sales, making them one of the biggest environmental offenders in publishing.” What makes this information even worse is that even though book sales have gone down “42% since their peak in 2007,” the number of books published is still exploding. In fact, in 2019, “the total number of books published in the U.S. exceeded 4 million.” To give one a better understanding of it, since 2007, when book sales peaked, there have been 10 times more books being published annually. With this information, it’s not hard to see why the paper industry is “the third-largest user of fossil fuels in the world” and is to blame “for almost 75 percent of the publishing industry’s carbon footprint.”

Why is this happening? Well, one of the reasons is that “often, when releasing a book, publishers estimate how many copies they’ll sell, add a margin of error and print a few thousand extra copies with the aim of bringing the cost per copy down,” but, unfortunately, most of the extra copies don’t get sold. So, what happens to all the extra books that aren’t being sold? Well, “approximately 10 million of the trees that are cut down to create books go to waste and just as many books do not end up being read,” and are either “remaindered or pulped.” What this means is that they are either sold at a huge discount or, the covers “are ripped off of the book and sent back to the publishers as proof that the book has been taken out of circulation” and then “are ground up, mixed with certain chemicals, and recycled into paper for other uses.” In regard to statistics, “25 to 36 percent of all books in bookstores are returned to the publisher, wasting tremendous amounts of energy, in transportation and disposal.” Another potential outcome is that, unfortunately, some of the books may end up finding their way into a landfill. If this happens, “then its process of decomposition will produce twice the climate change emissions as the manufacturing process.” Where things get weird is that although pulping is better than tossing books into a landfill, it still isn’t great for the environment. For example, while pulping does end up recycling the paper, the recycling process consists of using “power generated by coal, natural gas, or other fossil fuel sources. It also uses chemicals like bleach to clean, process and make new products from the paper.” Not only that, but “producing a book from recycled paper uses about 2/3 of a pound of minerals and two gallons of water,” which still takes its toll on the environment. What’s surprising though, is that while, according to the EPA, paper and paperboard made up 67 percent of the municipal solid waste (MSW) recycled in 2018, it also “made up the largest percentage of all the materials in MSW, at 23.1 percent of total generation,” and was the third largest percentage, at 12 percent, to end up in landfills. What this means is that although paper and paperboard are the most recycled MSW, they still have the highest rate of generation and still have a large percentage that end up in landfills. And while the amount that ends up in landfills is a decline from previous years, it’s still a large amount.

So, how can you help combat the threat to the environment that the book industry poses? Well, as stated above, while recycling, in the classic sense, is a wonderful idea, it’s still not a great solution, even though sometimes it is necessary. However, some better solutions, to quenching your thirst for books, are using your local library, purchasing an e-reader, or buying books from a publisher that takes the environment into account by printing on demand. Unfortunately, while these options are better, they also have some problems. For example, if you don’t live close to a library, you might have to pay a fee to get a library card and you also wouldn’t get to own the book that you are interested in. Another example is that, although a seemingly good alternative, e-readers also cause harm to the environment with the parts that are required to make them and the fact that they must be charged, etc. And lastly, while buying from publishers who print on demand, you are still adding to the cutting down of thousands of trees and still leaving a huge carbon footprint. Thankfully though, there is another option which I’m partial to, and that is thrift booking, more specifically, online thrift booking. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against buying books from thrift shops, however, it’s just a bit harder to find what you’re looking for in my opinion. Thrift booking is a great alternative because the book lives on, continues to keep the conversation going, brings joy to many people, which reduces the need for additional copies to be made, allows one to escape reality or gain knowledge, and most importantly, cuts down on waste and the carbon footprint of the book industry and paper industry. And while there are many online sites that sell thrift books, my personal favorite is actually called thriftbooks.

I discovered thriftbooks a little while ago when I realized that my love for reading was taking its toll on my bank account and on the environment. I decided I would look online for other alternatives and that’s how I first came across the thriftbooks site. What initially made me like it was the number of books that they had, as well as the diversity, and, of course, the price. However, another feature they offer, that I found to be unique, is that if you choose a book in like-new condition and they have that book in good condition in a warehouse that’s closer to you, they’ll tell you how much you’ll save to switch, but they’ll also inform you how you’ll help the environment by doing so. Not only that, but they also ship your purchases in recycled plastic bags. Thriftbooks is a wonderful site that is not only good for your wallet, but is good for the environment as well. In fact, according to their website, “materials [they] can’t use are sent to recycling plants, where each ton of 100% post-consumer copy paper (approximately 1.4 tons of books) saves 27 trees, 7,000 gallons of water, 4,100 kilowatts of electricity, and 60 pounds of air pollution.” Their website also states that “since 2016, thriftbooks has recycled 330,000 tons of books. That’s enough to save 16,000 acres of forest and 2.5 million barrels of oil.”

As you can see, the production of books can be very harmful to the environment. The number of trees being cut down, wastewater produced, fossil fuels being used, carbon dioxide being created, etc. is horrendous. Thankfully though, there are ways you can make a difference, you don’t have to sit idly by. Whether it be libraries, e-readers, environmentally friendly publishers, or my personal favorite, thrift booking, there are ways you can help positively impact the environment so that, years from now, our children and grandchildren will still be able to enjoy our beautiful mother earth. The earth has housed, fed, protected, and inspired us throughout the ages, she has given and given of herself, to the point that she is breaking down, and now it’s our turn to give back to her.