Sustainability

A beautiful thing about being completely not-for-profit is we can afford to be transparent and brutally honest!

The low-to-virtually-no impact we have on the environment as well as people’s wallets were both driving reasons we knew we were onto something good and knew we could rapidly move forward while still feeling like Pretty Good Guys in the end. We take lonely literature, turned-away-text, in-the-back-of-beyond-books that all currently exist and find new uses for them. We can’t call it REcycling because that would imply we are taking donated books, breaking them down in order to create new books. We aren’t repurposing them. We are, however, upcycling books. We are breathing new life into books that were otherwise sitting sad, shelved with the soot of sighs. The materials we use are all donated and/or used, from the books to the bookcases. Any paper used to spread the word of BookCycle PDX is printed locally and as recycled as we can find. Honestly, the only environmentally unsound thing which we at this time cannot get around is occasionally needing to use a gas-powered vehicle to transport heavy items like bookcases or boxes of books. We have plans to host bike rides/special public transit rides/Literacy Days that not only promote all of our bibliophilic goals, but also promote the alternatives to driving Portland is famous for as well as keeping Portland green. which shouldn’t be Weird!

We love our community and take pride in doing what we can to support a healthy environment!