Borders Throwing Away Books From Closed Waldenbooks

Employees of Borders reveal that the company is going to throw away thousands of books instead of donating them to libraries or shelters. The books will be trashed when more Waldenbooks stores are closed.

Last month, corporate parent Borders announced they will soon be closing 200 Waldenbooks book stores in communities nationwide. Current Waldenbooks employees have come forward to alert the public that the company plans to dispose of many unsold books in the cheapest, easiest, least responsible way possible - by trashing them.

"This is going to be happening in all the Waldenbooks stores at the end of their liquidation sales to anything left on the shelves," said Heather L., a Waldenbooks employee. "And it gives us all stomach aches to think about."

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Former Waldenbooks employees say they have previously witnessed and participated in the destruction of unsold books. "I used to work at a Waldenbooks and we would trash books, tons of books, like every two weeks," said Brooke Bennett, a former employee from Little Rock, AR. "It just killed me." Known in the bookselling industry as "dumpstering," this method of book disposal is standard practice not only at Borders-owned stores, but at many other chain book stores and mass retailers.

This is just appalling. There are so many organizations that would be happy to take the books, and many of them would pick them up.