If you’ve ever seen a book with the front cover cut in half, then you’ve rescued a book from the trash. When a book chain cuts or removes a front cover like that, that’s a book that was headed for the recycling plant. Those books aren’t meant to be in your hands, those generally end up as donations or fireplace fodder. Borders Group, parent company of Borders and Waldenbooks, is going through some contractions right now. Needing to save money, they plan on shuttering 200 Waldenbooks locations and throwing tens of thousands of books in the trash.
If they go through with this plan, guess where I’ll be at night in the middle of January? If you said crawling around inside a dumpster behind the bookstore, you’re probably right. I have no shame when it comes to dumpster diving. Besides, destroying books, even unsellable books, should be a crime when libraries are begging for handouts.
When I was in college, an entertainment media store closed in town. One of those all-in-one places that stocks way too much stuff, like a smaller, more expensive Best Buy. I was far from the first person to hit up the store, so by the time I got there the next morning there wasn’t much, but a rummage through their trash yielded me some very useful shelving units and more than a few free DVDs and CDs.
Tags: Borders, Borders Group, Waldenbooks, Borders to destroy unsold books, trashing books, book disposal, dumpster diving