Check further into your local recyclers. Here in St. Louis, we have a recycler that takes hardbound books. You might well have such a company in your town, too. We have to transport our books to this company (Central Paper Stock), but it is worth it to box up a vanload or two and drop them off. Much faster than having to cut off the covers or worse, cut off the glue. If I put in a Google search: ‘recycling hardcover books in st. louis’ I turn up this company. So, you might want to try that search, substituting your city. I just searched and found a company in Colorado Springs that claims to recycle hardbacks http://www.coloradomattressrecycling.com/CARDBOARD.html.

 

Denise

 

Denise Pakala

Associate Librarian for Technical Services

Covenant Theological Seminary

12330 Conway Rd.

St. Louis, MO 63141

denise.pakala@covenantseminary.edu

314-392-4104

 

From: Serials in Libraries Discussion Forum [mailto:SERIALST@LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG] On Behalf Of Diane Westerfield
Sent: Thursday, July 09, 2015 10:19 AM
To: SERIALST@LISTSERV.NASIG.ORG
Subject: [SERIALST] Recycling withdrawn bound periodicals?

 

Hi everyone,

 

My library is in the process of withdrawing a large number (5 digits) of bound periodicals and government documents. We thought we could just cut the covers off and throw them in the trash, while recycling the "meat" of the volumes as paper. Cutting off covers actually saves a little time in terms of stamping and marking.

 

However, our recycling company has come back and said they can't deal with the volumes because of the glue in the binding. We would have to chop or saw the spines off so all they have to deal with is the actual paper.

 

Anyone else run into this problem? And have a solution besides "send it all to the landfill"? I know PVA is used in commercial library binding and PVA is recyclable to plastic but perhaps it contaminates paper recycling. We don't have a guillotine in the library building, which I imagine would be the easiest way to chop off book spines.

 

Thanks,

Diane Westerfield

Colorado College

diane.westerfield@coloradocollege.edu

 


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