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Our tips for deciding which books to read, where to get them, and what to do with old and damaged books.
We love getting away from our screens, curling up in a mountain of blankets or stretching out in the sunshine, and reading a good book. For our fellow eco-conscious bookworms, here’s a guide for doing it all sustainably.
Choosing Your Next Read
If you have room for one more book on your TBR list, consider a climate book. Climate books are fiction or nonfiction reads that center the natural world, climate change, and humanity’s relationship with the environment — and there’s one for every reader, at any age.
Whether you do it to simply learn more about our planet or to inspire hope and combat “climate doomism,” reading climate books is a powerful way to connect to environmentalism. Look for your next read on our list of climate books for every reader, or peruse the books featured in our Favorite Things column.
Where to Buy, Barter, or Borrow Books
The most sustainable way to read new-to-you books is by keeping existing books in circulation.
This can look like shopping in your local used bookstore or at an online secondhand book dealer like Thriftbooks, finding your neighborhood Little Free Library to swap books, or borrowing from the library. All of these options reduce demand for the production of new materials, and most eliminate the emissions that would come from shipping a new book directly to you.
When it comes to e-books and e-readers, things get a bit more complicated. Though e-books don’t have to be shipped or printed on paper, production of e-reader devices requires a lot of energy and water, resulting in a high carbon footprint upfront.
An e-reader becomes the more environmentally friendly choice over physical copies only if you read more than 36 books on it over its lifespan. That’s perfectly doable for avid readers, as the devices can last three to five years. But for those who read less frequently, used physical books have a lower impact.
After the Story Is Over
If your shelf is creaking under the weight of too many books or you’ve got some copies damaged beyond repair, you have a few options for passing them along.
For gently used books that are still readable, remember those secondhand book options from above. When you’re ready to part with a book, you can often give it right back to the used bookstore where you bought it, donate it to the library, or add it to a local Little Free Library.
You can also donate old books to a prison library or other specific organizations like Better World Books or Books For Africa. (For more advice on where to donate old stuff, consult our Guide to Getting Rid of (Almost) Anything.)
For those books that are missing pages, water-damaged, or otherwise unreadable, reach out to your local theater groups, which might be able to use them as props. Or get crafty and upcycle old books into bookmarks, junk journals, paper flowers, and more!
