What To Do With Old Books You Can't Sell or Give Away

You've cleared out a room, or helped empty a parent's house, or finally tackled the shelves that have been stressing you out for years. Now there's a pile of books — maybe several boxes, maybe a truckload — and they need to go somewhere. You've realized they're not worth much, or you just don't have time to sort and sell. You just need them gone, responsibly.

I work in this space every day. I run free book pickup service across the Albuquerque metro, and the books I pick up range from highly collectible to completely unsellable. I've thought carefully about what happens to every category of book I handle, and I want to share what I actually know about the responsible options in my city.

The short answer: donate first, recycle second, landfill last. And before you decide to recycle, it's worth knowing whether any of your books have value — you might be surprised what collectors pay for the right title. But the details matter, and I want to be honest about what each option actually delivers for the books and for the environment.

Option 1: Donate to the New Mexico Literacy Project — The Best Choice for Most Books

I'm biased here — NMLP is my operation — so let me explain the actual case for donation rather than just asserting it's better.

When you donate books to me, here's what actually happens, in order:

1. I pick up for free. You don't haul anything. I come to you with a truck. The Albuquerque metro — North Valley, Northeast Heights, Rio Rancho, Corrales, South Valley, East Mountains, Nob Hill, Westside — I cover all of it. Schedule a free pickup here.
2. I sort everything by hand at the warehouse. Every box. Every book. I'm looking for collectibles (first editions, signed copies, regional titles), books in good readable condition, specialty subjects with audiences, and books that need to go to recycling. Nothing gets bulk-sorted into a recycling bin untouched.
3. Collectible books go to my eBay storefront. Anything with real resale value gets sold online at market value to the right buyer. This is how the whole operation sustains itself.
4. Good readable books find local readers. Books in usable condition get sold locally, given to community members who want them, or donated in bulk to programs that can use them. I work with a few local networks that get books to people who want to read them.
5. Truly unsellable books get recycled responsibly. Water-damaged, moldy, falling-apart books go through my commercial recycling partnership. Paper goes back into the recycling stream properly processed. Nothing goes to the landfill.

That sorting step is what makes the difference. A Goodwill or thrift store drop-off sorts too — but with a very different purpose. They're looking for what sells in their store, and their threshold for what's worth selling is different from ours. Books that don't sell at Goodwill after a few weeks come off the floor, and most end up in bulk recycling or salvage buyers anyway. The books never got a real chance at finding a reader.

I'm not a charity — I'm a for-profit business built around books. That means I have a genuine economic incentive to sort carefully and find the right home for every book. The incentive structure is different, and I think it produces better outcomes for the books.

Option 2: City of Albuquerque Curbside Blue Bin

Books are paper. Paper goes in the blue bin. Technically, yes — you can recycle books through the city's curbside single-stream program. But there are real caveats worth understanding.

Paperbacks

Paperback books — the flexible-cover kind — can go in the blue bin whole. The paper is good quality, the cover is typically recyclable, and they don't require any special preparation. Keep them dry, and they're fine recycling candidates.

Hardcover Books

Hardcover books require a little work before they're good recycling candidates. The problem is the binding — the glue used to attach pages to the spine, and the hardcover boards (the actual hard covers), which are often made of a composite material that doesn't recycle cleanly with paper. To properly prepare a hardcover book for the blue bin:

• Remove the hardcover boards — open the book flat and tear or cut away the front and back boards where they attach to the spine
• The boards themselves go in the trash (not recycling)
• The remaining book block — the pages with the spine — can go in the blue bin

Most people don't want to do this for a hundred hardcover books. That's completely understandable. For a small number of books, it's manageable. For a substantial collection, you need a different approach.

The Contamination Problem

Single-stream recycling (where everything goes into one bin) creates contamination challenges at the MRF. Wet paper is a significant problem — it breaks down and gets entangled with other recyclables, reducing the quality of the entire load. If your books have any moisture, they shouldn't go in the blue bin. Put them in a bag in the regular trash instead, or take them to Friedman for drop-off.

The Albuquerque MRF (materials recovery facility) sorts through single-stream recyclables. Books and bound paper can get caught in the sorting equipment — the binding can create tangles. This isn't a reason to avoid recycling books, but it is a reason why the blue bin isn't a perfect solution for large quantities.

Option 3: Friedman Recycling — The Right Choice for Truly Unsellable Books

Friedman Recycling has a drop-off location on Broadway SE in Albuquerque and accepts paper and cardboard, including books. If you have books that are genuinely beyond any use — water-damaged, moldy, falling apart, contaminated — Friedman is a legitimate destination.

Same hardcover preparation applies here: remove the boards before drop-off, put the boards in the trash. The paper block goes in the paper recycling.

Friedman is a commercial recycling operation — they process large volumes and do it properly. For books that have no useful life left, this is a responsible choice. But for books that are still readable, donation is still a better use of the material before it gets recycled.

Option 4: Goodwill and Savers — Honest Assessment

Goodwill and Savers thrift stores in Albuquerque accept book donations. I want to be honest about what this means in practice, because I think people often feel better about this option than they should.

Goodwill sorts donations and puts items on the floor to sell. Books that sell well — popular titles, good condition — will find a buyer and a reader. That's a good outcome. But a large fraction of donated books don't sell at thrift store prices before they're rotated off the floor. When books don't sell at Goodwill, they typically go into bulk salvage — sold by the pound to salvage buyers who may or may not find a market for them, or sent to recycling in bulk.

So the question is: what percentage of what you bring to Goodwill actually reaches a reader versus ends up in bulk salvage? I don't have their internal numbers, but my estimate based on what I know about the market is that the majority of donated books — especially encyclopedias, book club editions, older textbooks, and common bestsellers — don't find a buyer at Goodwill. They eventually get recycled through the same channels they would have through the blue bin or Friedman.

That doesn't mean Goodwill is a bad choice. If convenience is your priority and you want a clean donation receipt (though again, NMLP is not tax-exempt and neither is Goodwill's book processing relevant to your specific deduction situation — consult your accountant), Goodwill is a responsible option. It's just not the most thoughtful use of the material.

Option 5: Little Free Libraries — Good for a Small Number of Quality Books

Little Free Libraries are wonderful for what they're designed for: a neighborhood book exchange where people take a book and leave a book. There are dozens of them around Albuquerque, and they're a genuine community resource.

They work well for: gently used popular fiction, children's books, cookbooks with broad appeal, and books in excellent condition that fit the neighborhood's likely reading interests. A Nob Hill Little Free Library might welcome literary fiction and poetry. One in a family neighborhood might be more interested in children's books and genre fiction.

They are not the answer for: encyclopedias, textbook sets, Reader's Digest condensed books, water-damaged books, or anything in poor condition. These are burden transfers, not gifts. A Little Free Library that gets stuffed with undesirable books creates a problem for the owner, who has to remove the overflow and dispose of it themselves.

If you have five nice paperbacks and a Little Free Library in your neighborhood, great. If you have fifteen boxes of books, LFLs are not your answer.

Option 6: Creative Reuse — Real but Marginal

Book art and creative reuse of old books is a real thing with genuine communities of practice. Altered books (books transformed into art objects), book spines used as decor, hollowed books used as containers, thick hardcovers used as garden border edging, compressed book blocks used as architectural elements — these are all legitimate uses.

The honest assessment: this is a marginal outlet for a small fraction of books. The Albuquerque creative reuse community is active and real — there are artists and crafters who actively seek specific types of old books. But if you have fifty boxes of books, creative reuse absorbs maybe one of them in the best case scenario.

If you enjoy book arts or know someone who does, it's worth keeping a few candidates — especially books with interesting or decorative spines, large-format art books, or books with visual content. But don't plan your disposal strategy around craft projects.

What NOT to Do

A few things I see regularly that cause problems:

Don't Put Books in the Landfill Trash

Books are a recyclable material. Paper fiber is valuable. Sending books to the landfill when recycling options exist is simply a waste — of material, of the energy that went into producing the book, and of potential. The landfill is not actually full, and one truckload of books won't collapse the system, but it's a genuinely unnecessary waste when Friedman Recycling exists and when donation options like NMLP will come to your door for free. The only books that truly need to go in the trash are books contaminated with hazardous materials, mold so extensive that it poses a health risk, or books that have been so thoroughly destroyed that they can't enter a recycling stream cleanly.

Don't Leave Books on the Curb in Bad Weather

A box of books left in the rain turns into a problem. Wet paper is heavy, difficult to handle, and no longer cleanly recyclable — the fibers break down and can contaminate other recyclables when wet. If you're going to leave books outside with a "Free" sign, do it in dry weather, check on them regularly, and bring them in if they're not taken. Never leave books out overnight without cover if rain is possible.

Don't Illegally Dump Books

Leaving boxes of books behind dumpsters, in vacant lots, or on roadsides is illegal dumping. It's also genuinely inconsiderate — someone else has to deal with the mess you've left. With free options like NMLP pickup and Friedman drop-off, there's no reason to dump books. call me if you're overwhelmed by the volume and don't know what to do.

Don't Stuff a Donation Bin with Junk

Some donation bins around town — library drop-offs, thrift store bins, school collections — are intended for specific types of books. Stuffing them with encyclopedias, textbooks, or damaged books creates a problem for whoever manages the bin. They now have to sort and dispose of what you've left, often at their expense. If you're not sure a bin accepts what you have, call ahead or read the instructions on the bin.

The Environmental Case: Why It Matters

Books have a real environmental footprint. A standard hardcover book requires roughly two pounds of paper and associated inputs (water, energy, chemicals) to produce. The paper industry is one of the larger consumers of wood fiber globally. Recycling paper saves significant energy and water versus virgin fiber production — estimates vary, but recycling one ton of paper saves roughly 17 trees and 7,000 gallons of water.

But reuse beats recycling on environmental impact. If a book gets read again — by one more person, then another, then donated again — the environmental cost of its production gets amortized across many uses. The longer the useful life of the book, the better the environmental math. Recycling is the right answer at the end of a book's useful life. It shouldn't be a substitute for that useful life.

The Hierarchy: Reuse > Recycling > Landfill

Environmental best practice follows a clear hierarchy for any material:

1. Reduce — buy fewer things that will need disposal later. Not relevant here since you already have the books.
2. Reuse — extend the useful life of the material. For books: find another reader. Donation, resale, Little Free Libraries, giving to friends.
3. Recycle — recover the raw material value. For books: paper recycling through the blue bin, Friedman, or commercial recycling partnerships.
4. Dispose — landfill as last resort, only for truly contaminated or unrecoverable material.

When you donate to NMLP, you're putting the books through this hierarchy in the right order. I find readers first (reuse), then I recycle what can't be read (recycle), and I avoid the landfill entirely. That's the goal.

How Paper Recycling Actually Works

For anyone curious about what happens after books enter the recycling stream: sorted paper goes to a pulping facility where it's shredded and mixed with water to create a slurry. The fibers are separated from contaminants — inks, coatings, plastic elements, binding glue — through a series of cleaning processes. The cleaned fiber is then reformed into rolls of recycled paper, which become newsprint, cardboard, tissue products, and other paper goods.

Books are generally high-quality paper with good fiber content. The main challenges are binding glue and hardcover boards, which is why preparation matters. A properly prepared book — boards removed for hardcovers, paperback whole — is good recycling feedstock.

Contamination is the enemy of good recycling. Wet paper, non-paper materials mixed in, and plastic coatings all reduce the quality of the recycled fiber. The goal is clean, dry paper into the recycling stream.

What NMLP Does With Unsellable Books — The Honest Version

I want to be transparent about this because I think honesty builds more trust than vague claims about books "finding homes."

When I pick up a donation, I sort through every box. Here's the actual breakdown of what typically happens:

The part I'm proudest of: I never put anything in the landfill that can be recycled. That's a genuine commitment, not marketing language. The recycling process costs money, and I absorb that cost because it's the right thing to do.

The 24/7 Book Drop

If you'd rather drop off books yourself than schedule a pickup, I have a 24/7 drop bin outside my warehouse at 5445 Edith Blvd NE, Unit A, Albuquerque, NM 87107. It's accessible any time, day or night, no appointment needed, no contact required.

The bin holds several standard cardboard boxes worth of books. It's secure and covered to protect against weather. For larger loads — more than a car's worth — please schedule a pickup rather than filling the drop bin multiple times.

Related Pages

Depending on your situation, one of these might be more directly useful:

• Book Donation Pickup Albuquerque — schedule a free pickup anywhere in the Albuquerque metro
• Free Book Evaluation — find out if any of your books are worth something before you donate or recycle
• Where to Sell Books in Albuquerque — if some of your books have real value, here's where and how to sell them
• Sell or Donate? — a guide to deciding which option makes sense for your situation
• Where to Donate Books in Albuquerque — full guide to donation options across the city
• Estate Cleanout — if you're dealing with a full property, not just books
• 24/7 Book Drop — directions and details for my always-open drop bin
• Book Recycling vs. Donation — Which Is Better? — deeper dive on the environmental comparison

Frequently Asked Questions