The #1 Way To Go Green This Earth Day

Posted by Erin on 04.22.2012 at 9:34 am

Donate your books to Better World Books!

Admittedly, no official polling group has ranked the Better World Books donation program #1, but you are #1 in our eyes when you save your books from a miserable fate in the landfill, and instead donate them to the fight for a fully literate world.

There are actually three big ways that we at Better World Books like to support you in your Earth-friendly efforts:

1) The donation and Drop Box program
2) Our carbon-balanced shipping option
3) Providing a bevy of used books to buy

Big green world literacy machine (aka: Drop Box)

Here is a video which will show you how one parking spot can change the world.

The annual estimated environmental impact of one Drop Box is:

164+ trees saved - Books placed in a Drop Box are either reused or recycled saving trees from being processed to produce those books. There are 24 trees saved per ton of 100% recycled fiber produced.

10,000+ books reused or responsibly recycled - We either sell the donated books on our website, our online marketplaces, or our Indiana stores. Each book sold generates revenue for our literacy and library partners. For each book sold on betterworldbooks.com, we donate a book to someone in need. When books cannot be sold, we donate them to local and global education organizations. If a book is not fit for donation, we have it recycled.

74,000+ gallons of water saved - There are 8,750 gallons of water saved per ton of paper produced. It takes considerably less water to recycle a book vs the amount it takes to break down a tree into usable fiber.

33,000+ kilowatts of electricity saved - There are 4,893 Kilowatt Hours of electricity saved per ton of paper produced.

15+ cubic yards of landfill space saved - By keeping these books out of the landfill, there is more space for real trash.

Our Drop Boxes are designed and manufactured in the U.S.A. with domestic steel (recycled, of course). Each Drop Box holds approximately 800 books. Select drop boxes are equipped with level sensor technology that alerts us as the Drop Box fills to capacity.

We are very grateful for you wonderful book donors that have made the Drop Box program a success so far, and for those that will help it grow even more, thank you!

To learn more about the Drop Box program, check out this recent blog or the Drop Box site.

Free, green shipping

If you have purchased a book from our website, hopefully you’ve noticed that we have a special option during the checkout process: a 5 cents per book optional carbon-balanced shipping add-on. We offer a way for you to offset the carbon emissions your book shipment makes in our world.

Thank you so much to all of you who have chosen to buy pre-loved books (used = no new paper needed), from Better World Books (Book for Book donation with each purchase and eco-friendly triple-bottom-line), and pay for the carbon-balanced shipping! Each time you do that, you are celebrating and preserving our Earth – every day, not just on this special Earth Day.

Earth Day ask

Since it is Earth Day, I want to challenge you to take your book-loving, tree-hugging, wonderful self one step further. Please tell one friend about how they can celebrate Earth Day every day by shopping with Better World Books.

How are you remembering the Earth today?

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