Recycling award for landfill partnership
The Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee (LARAC) award held the project up as ‘best practice’.
Selkirk-based Bookdonors sells unwanted books, donates books to community groups to support literacy development and ensures that any books that are not wanted are recycled – therefore reducing the amount of books going to landfill. This year, Bookdonors is on target to process 600 tonnes of books. It has also raised more than £140,000 for charity since 2005.
The Bookdonors project goes beyond the environmental and charitable elements. The organisation’s inclusive employment policies provide flexible working opportunities and 80 per cent of its 30 staff were long-term unemployed, a third have disabilities or a medical condition and the company also supports ex-offenders.
In 2008, it provided 43 training placements and 28 volunteering opportunities.
The Council’s recycling team recognised how valuable Bookdonors was to the community and the environment, and the two have now worked together for more than four years.
When an issue was identified in relation to books at charity shops, Bookdonors, with Council funding, came to the rescue. Bookdonors now helps to reduce waste by taking books from charity shops that would otherwise have gone to landfill. These are then sorted into types for distribution back to shops, sold on the internet or reused in one of the many schemes they operate, and those that cannot be used are recycled.
Bookdonors has also received other help from the Council such as the loan of some short-term storage space when it was desperately needed and support for employees through the occupational therapy Ways2Work scheme.
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