Can you recycle books?
It depends
The paper inside is worth recovering, but most programs do not want a bound book in the curbside cart. Donate it if it is still readable, take it to a paper drop-off bin if it is not, and check your own program before assuming a paperback is fine, because that is the rule that actually varies.
Follow it down the line
Three different questions hide inside "is this recyclable?", and the answer can change at each step.
The material · Sometimes
Is the material recyclable?
The pages are ordinary paper and mills want them. The binding and the cover are the problem. The spine is held with a hot melt adhesive, typically an ethylene vinyl acetate, and that class of glue is among the more troublesome things a paper recycling mill deals with. The industry files these under stickies: they survive pulping, then gather as deposits on machine rolls, wires, felts and dryer surfaces, and they show up as spots in the finished sheet. Book bindings appear by name on the standard list of where stickies come from, alongside address labels and envelopes. A hardcover adds a second problem that is not chemistry at all, because the boards are layered with cloth or coated paper and are not really paper. That split is why federal guidance treats the two formats differently.
Sources: US Department of Energy: A Novel Unit Operation to Remove Hydrophobic Contaminants, TAPPI: Eliminating a Common OCC Stickies Problem, US EPA: How do I recycle common recyclables
The facility · Sometimes
Will a sorting facility recover it?
Sorting facilities can have mechanical problems with books. A book is a dense block moving down a line built for loose flat paper. Recycle Ann Arbor, which operates the facility its own city feeds, says the covers and binding are too thick to make it through MRF sorting and baling machines, that books jam the machinery, and that the jams cause damage, delays and unsafe conditions for the people working the line. It says this about paperbacks as well as hardbacks, which is worth noticing, because most advice treats a paperback as unproblematic. That is one operator rather than every operator, and the programs that do take paperbacks at the curb are running them through a facility that evidently copes. Hardcovers are the case nobody makes an exception for. Pages torn free of the spine stop being a sorting problem at all.
Your curbside program · Varies
Will your curbside program take it?
Programs disagree, and not along the line you would expect. Oneida-Herkimer in New York accepts paperbacks in curbside recycling and recovers the paper from both the inside and the outside of the book, while refusing hardcovers because the hard binding layers cardboard, glue and fabric or glossy paper. Cuyahoga County tells residents to keep bound books out of the curbside cart entirely and directs them to paper drop-off bins, which do take hardcover and softcover alike. Recycle Ann Arbor rejects paperbacks by name, for the same reason it rejects hardbacks. What all three agree on is the unbound case: pages removed from the spine are ordinary mixed paper and can go in the cart. So the format is not the reliable guide here. The program is.
Sources: Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Authority: Books, CuyahogaRecycles: Books, Recycle Ann Arbor: Books, paperback
What you need to do
- Donate it first if it is still readable. Reuse beats recycling here by a wide margin
- Keep bound books out of the curbside cart unless your program names them as accepted
- For a hardcover, take off the boards and spine. The pages inside are ordinary mixed paper
- Books going into a paper drop-off bin should be clean and dry
Where else it can go
Donation and reuse
Libraries, Little Free Libraries, schools, community centers and thrift stores all take books, and a book that gets read again skips the pulping entirely. Every program cited on this page recommends this route before recycling.
Condition is the limit. Resale shops generally want books they can actually sell, and encyclopedias, dictionaries and dated textbooks are the usual refusals.
Paper drop-off bin
The bins run by paper companies in school, municipal and place-of-worship parking lots accept whole books, hardcover and softcover, which curbside collection will not.
Books need to be clean and dry, and the operators do not always publish their locations, so the local service department may be the only way to find a current one.
Unbind it
Tear the pages away from the spine and cover and they stop being a book. Loose paper goes in the curbside cart under every program cited here.
Only sensible for a book nobody is going to read. It is also the one route that works no matter where you live.
Common mistakes
- Putting a hardcover in the cart because a book is obviously paper, when the boards are layered cloth and coated board and the block jams the sorting line
- Assuming a paperback is safe everywhere. At least one large program rejects paperbacks by name, on the same grounds as hardbacks
- Recycling a book somebody would still read, when donating it keeps it in use and costs nothing