About 320 million books are thrown away each year rather than recycled or reused, and paper accounts for 25% of waste in the landfill. Textbooks are often difficult to recycle due to their thick, glued bindings, making them a part of the 40 million tons of recyclable paper that the EPA estimates are thrown into landfills every year.
“Textbooks are hard to recycle because the binding makes them hard to recycle easily. You have to find a particular method to remove the binding and. then utilize the paper,” says Jessica Choi, associate general manager for Chegg.
