Charity shops pulping or rejecting old books

George White · 10-04-2025 05:43AM #1

I hate when this happens.

From:Sheffieldforum.co.uk/topic/280216-charity-shops-pulping-donated-books-yet-again/

[QUOTE]

The latest culprits are the British Heart Foundation at the top of the Moor. While buying a computer book from there today, I remarked that it was a few years old now. The chap behind the counter said, "Yes, we don't get many modern books". This came as a bit of a surprise to me since the shelves are full of pristine new-looking paperbacks, so I pointed out that they certainly don't get any old books either.

He then told me that they have a bin downstairs which they fill up with all the old books, and they are then sent away for pulping because, and I quote, "they don't meet our standards". Customers don't even get a chance to buy them, they're just sent off to be destroyed. To me, as a book lover, this is nothing short of criminal, and of course I said so, but it was like water off a duck's back: it's their policy and that's that. Their 'policy' is evidently the same as that of the Bluebell Wood hospice shop on King Street, where in a similar conversation some time ago the manageress asked me, "Why would anyone want a tatty old book when they can have a nice new paperback?" In my view, people with this sort of attitude shouldn't be allowed within 100 yards of an old book. It's a bit like asking why would people want old pieces of Royal Worcester porcelain when they can have a plastic cup from Poundland instead.

So please, please, please, if you are going to donate any old books to charity, don't give them to the British Heart Foundation because they will just end up in the bin. Or indeed to Oxfam (who put them out at silly prices, then pulp them when they don't sell), Bluebell Wood, Help the Aged, or St Luke's (though to be fair they usually give customers a chance to buy them first), or anywhere else which only has new-looking books on their shelves. The PDSA in Broomhill has at least started to make an attempt to sell them lately, which makes me suspect that prior to that they sent them all to be pulped as well. In fact it's hard to come up with a shop where I can recommend you do take them, and on the whole I'd say just keep them and enjoy them instead.

Note that I'm not saying here that no book should ever be pulped, but faced with ten copies of Jordan's memoirs and a pile of old books, I know which I'd rather send.

Sorry if this comes across as a rant, but this sort of thing really does make my blood boil. And if any representatives of the BHF want to post to defend their policy, I'd be glad to hear your reasons for perpetrating this vandalism.

[/QUOTE]

Anyone try to stop old charity shops?

I used to give my books to charity shops and recycling centres hoping other people would take them. Now I feel like I've doomed my friends.

George White · 10-04-2025 05:54AM

It upsets me deeply.

Peregrinus · 10-04-2025 05:54AM

The purpose of charity shops is not to find a second life for your old books, clothes, etc; it's to raise money for charity. The reason they pulp books or otherwise discard much of what is donated to them is simple; nobody will buy the stuff, at any price.

The value that charity shops add is this: they go through your rubbish, and sort it into that which has some value to someone, and that which has no value to anyone, and then they try to match the goods that have some value with people who will value them. That's a useful service. It promotes recycling and reuse, and it generates revenue for them that they use to fund their charitable activities.

It's not their fault that some of what you give them is useless and valueless. All you can ask of them is that they dispose of that stuff in the most responsible fashion that they can.

If it's books in particular that you are giving away, you might to better to give them not to a charity shop but to a dedicated second-hand bookshop, run by people who are in the business because they love books. They might be better than a charity shop at recognising a book that someone will want, and more willing to provide storage for that book until the someone turns up. But, not to shatter your dreams, but second-hand bookshops also send a large amount of their acquisitions to The Great Library In The Sky.

L1011 · 10-04-2025 06:46AM

What do you expect them to do with half a million copies of last summer's bestseller that no longer has any demand?

Kalimah · 10-04-2025 06:47AM

I volunteer at a local parish Christmas sale of work on the book stall every year. We sort the donations the week before. You’d want to see the absolute rubbish we get. Mildewed books that have been in an attic for years, torn books, foreign language books from the 50s, computer books from the 80s etc etc. All go into a skip.
I’m a book lover myself and I don’t particularly like having to do it but I resent having to sort other people’s rubbish because they’re too lazy to walk to their recycling bin.
I wonder what the quality of the books that the charity shops are getting? We’d never dump a book because it isn’t modern. If it’s in good condition it goes on the tables for sale.

George White · 10-04-2025 06:54AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123342847#Comment_123342847

I know that about secondhand bookshops.

Jim_Hodge · 10-04-2025 06:56AM

Do you want them to put crap on the shelves? That wouldn't help their sales. People just dump boxes of rubbish with charity shops every day.

beachhead · 10-04-2025 07:17AM

Dumping happens everywhere. But a charity shop won't dump books if they think there is a market.Damaged,mildewed will go.

breezy1985 · 10-04-2025 07:29AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058405732/charity-shops-pulping-or-rejecting-old-books

This person sounds like a tw@t. Probably one of those "letter to the editor" type busybodies that never worked a day in their lives.

England is full of them. I have a friend working in the membership department of British Heritage who has to deal with these fools every day.

Boggles · 10-04-2025 08:39AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058405732/charity-shops-pulping-or-rejecting-old-books

He sounds like a crank.

It's okay to pulp books he doesn't like just not the ones he does.

While buying a computer book from there today,I remarked that it was a few years old now. The chap behind the counter said, "Yes, we don't get many modern books". This came as a bit of a surprise to me since the shelves are full of pristine new-looking paperbacks, so I pointed out that they certainly don't get any old books either.

The poor guy working there having to deal with this level of dangerous stupidity.

BrianD3 · 10-04-2025 08:45AM

"Note that I'm not saying here that no book should ever be pulped, but faced with ten copies of Jordan's memoirs and a pile of old books, I know which I'd rather send"

Collecting and reading old books is a niche activity and normies are going to be more interested in Jordan's memoirs.

I haven't been in a charity shop for years, when i last checked them out they were 90% women's clothes and while I'm not an expert on women's clothers, the prices seemed high. Who is going to0 pay these prices - trend followers and virtue signallers who want to "save the world"?

The charity shop model seem like a flawed and inefficient one. The ones near me are mini glass palaces, how much are they paying in rent. But I've no doubt that much of what is given to shops is junk, a bag of tattered books with some broken toys and a pair of skidmarked underpants thrown in as a bonus.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/personal-finance/how-much-money-do-charity-shops-actually-make-1.2988229

the_amazing_raisin · 10-04-2025 11:08AM

I heard that charity shops had a major problem with people donating books they'd found in an attic or shed which were covered in damp mould

As well as the health hazards, the mould would spread to other stuff in the store room and means it all had to be destroyed

I'm not a fan of books being destroyed but in defence of the charity shops people have been using them as a free alternative to the rubbish dump for years

One potential option would be to try and do some restoration of older books and maybe just give them away?

I saw in one town they'd installed a "mini library" which was basically a small greenhouse kind of box with books in it. People could come and take or leave books as they wished

George White · 10-04-2025 11:27AM

Ah, the mould is always a problem, yes, but that still doesn't mean perfectly good books get wasted.

Rocket_GD · 10-04-2025 11:34AM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123343579#Comment_123343579

What do you expect a charity shop to do if they receive loads of copies of the same book?

They have limited space and as a previous poster said they're there to make money for the selected charity, not be a library stocked with 12 copies of "The Da Vinci Code".

LambshankRedemption · 10-04-2025 11:55AM

I was in a charity shop in Westport a few years ago and they had a set of shelves in the corner that was filled with copies of The Da Vinci Code. It was the Da Vinci Code bookcase. I just did a count of my own book shelf, theres 22 books on one shelf and many much thicker than the Da Vinci code, so in that set of shelves in that shop, they easily had 140 copies of The Da Vinci Code if not more.

What else are charity shops going to do with unwanted books?

This reminds me of a scene in the movie The Day After Tomorrow. They are holed up inside the New York Public Library and are looking for books that they can burn for heat, and they are all against the idea of burning books, but it's that or freeze to death. Two of them get into an argument over should they or shouldn't they burn something by Nietsche, and another guy calls out to them an says "Er guys? There's a whole section down here on tax law, lets burn that stuff first".

When i was clearing out my parents house I found 2 books on Office 97, and the Windows 2000 Systems Administrator course(six books in total each the size of a phonebook). It's safe to say there is no demand for them any more.

JVince · 10-04-2025 12:05PM

Shelf space costs money - doesn't matter if it's a charity shop or a high end fashion retailer.

The high end fashion retailer gets to choose carefully what goes on a shelf. The charity shop doesn't and these days gets a huge amount of donations.

2nd hand books are not in demand. The interest in them in an unsorted manner in a charity shop is near zero and then the purchaser wants to pay 20c.

For those with a specialist interest in older books, there are dozens of websites there that save all the hassle of looking through shelves upon shelves of books in hundreds of charity shops.

Hence pulping them and turning them into something useful (cardboard, tissue paper etc) is the best option..

Book distributors and publishers also pulp/shred books. If they print too many for demand, they get them shredded. Easons send huge volumes to Panda shredding in Ballymount.

megaten · 10-04-2025 01:46PM

Was under the impression that here lot of them get sent of to larger online secondhand bookseller in the UK unless they think they are immeditatly saleable. Makes you pine for a proper secondhand bookshop. The only chrarity shop that had a good selection of books even semi-regualry where I live closed down recently.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123343690#Comment_123343690

Is there that many though. The only site I know thats any good is betterworldbooks and that seems to be mostly ex-library copies.

JVince · 10-04-2025 02:52PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123344080#Comment_123344080

Kennys, Books.ie, Ulysses books, DeBurca and many more here for those wanting specific books in specialist areas.

World of Books in the UK would be the biggest for everyday books. They buy from charities and do the sorting process. About 20% of what they get are suitable for selling

Pauliedragon · 10-04-2025 03:07PM

There's a book exchange in a shopping centre here in Cork. I assume they have them around the place. You bring in your books and take any of interest to you home in exchange.

LambshankRedemption · 10-04-2025 03:45PM

I used to give my books to charity shops and recycling centres hoping other people would take them. Now I feel like I've doomed my friends.

What did you think the recycling centres did with them?

George White · 10-04-2025 04:21PM

The recycling centre in Bray had a free book exchange area.

silliussoddius · 10-04-2025 04:35PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123344511#Comment_123344511

If it's an exchange then don't you end up with more crud being dropped off and you end up with old books just being recycled through the exchange?

LambshankRedemption · 10-04-2025 04:39PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123344511#Comment_123344511

And you think the recycling centre never recycled any books they got in?

littlefeet · 10-04-2025 05:04PM

We have too much stuff.

Charity shops have become a big business; one of the major charity shops gets an auction house to value items, so no chance of finding something valuable anymore in a charity shop. Some charity shops are franchises; the franchises get to keep a percentage of the value of what they sell.

The fun and serendipity of charity shops has gone in the past few years.

littlefeet · 10-04-2025 05:06PM

It will come to a stage where people will have to pay to get rid of clothes, which would good thing.

BrianD3 · 10-04-2025 05:21PM

This thread made me think of a previous one about the stuff that dead people leave behind them. Due to personal/family circumstances and my own hoarding habits, I'm dealing with "stuff" issues. For instance, my large but incomplete collection of car magazines from the 90s. Junk, basically. And in 50 years' time, it'll still be junk. I'm planning to keep a small number of magazines that interest me and pulp the rest. I wonder would some rock up to a charity shop with this kind of junk and expect it to be taken and be miffed if it wasn't - leading to staff taking it and quietly disposing of it.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058219488/the-stuff-that-dead-people-leave-behind-them/p1

George White · 10-04-2025 05:23PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123344548#Comment_123344548

You give and take. There was a charity shop in there. The two have now merged.

LambshankRedemption · 10-04-2025 05:30PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123344669#Comment_123344669

Around this time last year I was clearing out my parents house. There was their stuff. And stuff from my old bedroom from when Id been a kid, and I'd been living there for 3 years so all of my stuff as well.

I had to get rid of loads of stuff that I wanted to keep but, I was going from a big house in the country to a 2 bed apartment, you have to draw the line somewhere. Loads of stuff that was, I dont want to say junk, but of zero value to pretty much anyone else(so I suppose thats the definition of junk). Two years worth of Dinosaur magazines from the early 90s. And 6 binders worth of aircraft magazines. And, countless computer magazines.

HazeDoll · 10-04-2025 06:16PM

I run a school library and I frequently get well-intentioned donations of books from parents of students. Out of 100 books I might keep four or five. There are always loads of books that might have come free with a Sunday paper years ago, things like 'Microwaving Made Easy' or 'Windows '95 for Beginners' that no teenager is ever going to open. Lots of Reader's Digest dreck, lots of mammyromance, even some lives of the saints. It's so obvious that these are books that nobody wants, why should it be up to me to dump them in the recycling?

I have learned to harden my heart and now I get a lot of satisfaction from flinging a book into a waiting blue bin.

AndrewJRenko · 10-04-2025 07:01PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123344633#Comment_123344633

Which charity shops in Ireland are franchises?

littlefeet · 10-04-2025 07:06PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123344912#Comment_123344912

Perhaps franchises is not the correct word, but they are based on the person running it getting a % of the turnover as opposed to how other charity shops are run.

Charity shops pulping or rejecting old books

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