Fighting global climate change, and other forms of environmental damage, requires us to think more expansively about the things that we own – things like books.
Books are great, but they take energy to produce and they usually are made from materials from trees that are cut down before their time. So, one of the ways that we could cut down on our energy usage, and help protect the diminishing forests of the earth, would be to buy fewer books.
The trouble is that books are good for us. They bring us information and ideas, and help keep our minds sharp. It would be a shame to give up books.
Except for the books we don’t like, or that are no longer useful to us. Those would be okay to give up.
We shouldn’t just throw away those books we don’t want anymore, however. Putting a book in the garbage doesn’t change the fact that it’s been produced. It only moves it to a dump.
By giving up unwanted books in the right way, however, it is possible to prevent more books from being produced. Get a used book into the hands of someone who wants it, and that person won’t buy a new book. The energy and resources that would have been used to make a new book are thus saved.
There are a couple of options for getting this done. One is the old-fashioned used book store. A newer option is Book Mooch. At Book Mooch, you can offer your unwanted used books to other people. Whenever you give a book away, you get a point. Then, you can use your points to get used books from other people.
Just like that, a whole bunch of energy and resources are saved. Fighting environmental destruction doesn’t have to be complicated. It only requires us to reconsider the way we are used to doing things, and, here and there, to mooch a little.
And Freecycle. You can also do that for many things–big and little.
Any way that reuses items and doesn’t send them away to landfills is a good thing for the environment.
An interesting idea, but giving books away online means you have to spend money for postage. The smallest book costs $1.35 to mail, a more typical book $1.59, mailing a book outside the U.S. can cost 5 or 10 dollars. Then you have to find a place to store the books while you wait to see if someone wants them. Much easier and cheaper to donate them to a thrift store. If there’s a book you really want you can still order it used online from Amazon, ABEbooks, or Alibris.