Go Green — Sell your Textbooks

Selling College Textbooks

Afraid of walking by that rickety bookshelf for fear your old textbooks will tumble off and bury you under a paper avalanche?  Having trouble navigating across your dorm room because of all the old books on the floor? Using a stack of books as a lamp table or doorstop?  You are not alone.  Many students acquire a huge collection of textbooks during their college years and don’t know what to do with them when they don’t need them anymore.  Fortunately, there is a way to get rid of this clutter and go green at the same time.

Sell your textbooks,  it’s environmentally friendly.  You may have thought of selling them, but one of your friends said it wasn’t worth the hassle, because they only got a few dollars back for their books.  It’s true that you can never get as much for a textbook as you originally paid for it, but sought after books can bring a good return, sometimes as much as half or more the original price.  However, selling your books brings more than economic benefits.  When you sell your textbooks you are recycling them.  Not only will another student thank the anonymous person who allowed them to buy a used textbook at a reduced price, but the environment will thank you as well.  Well, not really, but you know what I mean.

Selling your used textbooks is an easy way  to go green and get back a little money in the process.  It helps reduce the number of books being dumped in landfills, it helps conserve trees, and it helps conserve energy.

Books in Landfills

           Thousands of books in good condition are dumped in landfills each year.  While books in landfills do not present the environmental hazards that plastic, Styrofoam, and other non-biodegradable materials do, they do take up unnecessary space.  According to the World Business Council for Sustainable Business, about 33% of books printed never make it into the hands of readers.  They sit unsold on bookstore shelves and are finally sent back to the publisher for a refund.  Some of these returned books may make it to bargain book sales, but most wind up in landfills.

Resell your Textbooks and Conserve Trees

           The pages and binding of most books are produced from trees cut for this purpose; the World Business Council for Sustainable Business reports that only 5 percent of the paper used to make books comes from recycled material.  According to Conservatree it takes a dozen trees to produce a ton of standard quality paper (40 cases) and higher quality  paper takes twice as many trees.  More new books sold means more trees have been cut down and can  no longer benefit the environment.

          Most of us take trees for granted.  They are beautiful and offer great shade in the summer heat, but we may not realize how much they do for us and the impact our actions can have on them.

How do trees benefit the environment?

During photosynthesis trees take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen; this helps rid the air of excess carbon dioxide and helps reduce the “greenhouse effect.”  The greenhouse effect occurs when dangerous gases are trapped in the earth’s atmosphere, allowing heat to build up and cause climate change.  Besides carbon dioxide, trees clean other pollutants from the air.  Trees help prevent erosion and conserve soil.  There is no question about it.  Human beings need trees.

About 42% of trees harvested world-wide are used in the paper industry.  Most trees used in the paper industry come from natural forests.  This means that the natural habit of many animals is disturbed when more paper is produced.  For example, in once  heavily-forested  British Columbia, the Ministry of the Environment estimates that one in eight species is endangered, primarily due to logging destroying natural habitats.  In the Southern United States according to the USDA Forest Service Southern Forest Resource Assessment (2001) over 5 million acres of trees are logged by the paper industry each year; these Southern forests are some of North America’s most biodiverse and losing them can threaten many species.

Many lumber companies make their logging more sustainable, by planting a number of seedlings for each tree they cut down.  This helps the environment in the long term, but trees take years to grow.  Other measures are needed to preserve environmentally beneficial forests

There are many ways you as a consumer can help this effort.  Although it may not seem like it, small things can help the environment in a big way.  For example, the recent push to use reusable, cloth grocery bags has reduced the number of paper and plastic bags being dumped in landfills, because a large number of people have started to use environmentally friendly, reusable bags.  Sell your textbooks and take another step in this direction.

Talk to your friends about the benefits of going green by selling your textbooks.  If the majority of students regularly resold their textbooks it could  have a great benefit for the environment and it might make textbook publishers more sensitive to the economic needs of their customers.

Textbook publishers regularly revise their books in order to sell new books; often the revisions are slight and unnecessary, but professors require the new editions.  This forces students to buy new books instead of used ones.  A mass movement to resell and buy used textbooks could send a needed message to publishers and slash the production of unneeded books which waste precious natural resources.

Selling your used textbooks takes very little effort or time.  It sure beats having those books around your room collecting dust, taking up space, and being stumbling blocks.  It is also much better than throwing those old volumes out and having them take up space in a landfill.

Reselling Textbooks Conserves Energy

           Current methods of making paper are not environmentally friendly.  They use a large amount of energy and they release toxins, like chlorine, into the environment.

Paper products can be recycled by being used in the production of more paper, but the process involved  also consumes substantial energy.  Books are especially difficult to recycle in this way because their glue and binding must be disposed of before their paper can be ground up to make more paper.  Some companies do recycle old books, but this practice is not widespread and if you want to take advantage of it you may have difficulty finding a local company which does it.

It is much simpler to recycle your used textbooks by selling them in their original form.  There a numerous companies which will buy your books online.  Selling your books online is easy.  The company will send you a free shipping label by e-mail which you can print out; they will also send you one by mail if you don’t have a printer.  You pack up the books and take them to the post office.  Once the company receives the books, you will be sent a check.

Reselling your books takes little time and it leaves virtually no carbon footprint on the environment.  So go green—resell those used textbooks and get a little “green” for yourself.

Sources

Conservatree—Trees Into Paper
http://www.conservatree.org/index.shtml

Environmental Paper Network.
http://www.environmentalpaper.org/PAPER-statistics.html

Green America Today—Better Paper Project. http://www.greenamericatoday.org/programs/woodwise/consumers/stats/index.cfm

World Business Council for Sustainable Development
http://www.wbcsd.org/templates/TemplateWBCSD5/layout.asp?MenuID=1