Montreal student duo launches project to keep books out of landfills
The MTL Book Project collects donated books and puts them in new hands
McGill students Justin Kashi and Armand Khairabadi are on a mission to save books from ending up in the landfill.
The two young men, who study bioengineering and business respectively, came up with the idea after reading that around 580,000 tonnes of books are being thrown into landfills annually.
This statistic comes from a study by the United States National Wildlife Federation and the Environmental Protection Agency.
The concept behind the students' project is simple: people who have a stack of books they no longer want can contact the group's Facebook page and schedule a pick-up.
Once the books are collected, they are sorted and either donated to local libraries and schools or resold for profit.
"Our vision is really to offer a helping hand in our community," said Kashi. "I know it's something we can do to impact the environment in a positive way."
He said many people may not know that by curbing their books, they are actually contributing to waste production.
"The truth of the matter is, sadly a lot of books we think we recycle — they are thrown in the landfills instead. A lot of recycling processing facilities, they don't have the equipment necessary to process the glue binding in these book spines, especially in hard cover books."
The group collects a wide range of books from textbooks to children's books. Kashi says they are committed to finding new homes for everything they collect.