Sam Chetan-Welsh, a Glasgow Greenpeace representative interviewed by ITV, called it “an unimaginable amount of unnecessary waste, and just shocking to see a multi-billion pound company getting rid of stock in this way. Stuff that’s not even single use but not being used at all, straight off the production line and into the bin.” (Returns are always scary for authors, too. They may have learned that they sold 500 or 1000 books in October, only to find that those books didn’t sell at the register in the all-important third quarter, and now the author’s royalty statement won’t be what they expected. It can be a raw deal for everyone, and that’s just one reason many publishers are trying to move away from the consignment model. But many bookstores rely on the ability to return, and publishers want to keep their partners in bookselling happy, and so it goes. But I digress.) According to an excellent New York Magazine article from 2012, “Dead Books Club,” the idea of pulping books, mechanically chewing books up until they turn into a sort of milky liquid that can be reformed into paper, came about during paper shortages during WWII. Paper fibers lend themselves to recycling fairly well, though for a high-quality, long-lasting paper, “virgin” paper fibers need to be mixed with the recycled fibers. In 2012, about 13% of book paper was made from recycled books.
