The world is currently facing the harsh realities of deforestation. It takes a few hours to cut down huge trees but it takes long years for them to grow again! Mankind has to wait for more than 100 years to replace the lush greenery and in some areas, growing trees has become next to impossible due to encroaching in the natural land!

Paper is manufactured by cutting such trees. Hence, in order to conserve the natural resources, recycling the paper is very important. Paper not only includes the white sheets, it includes newspapers, book and magazines. Though paper in any form is 100% biodegradable, in order to reduce the cutting down of trees to manufacture them, you should find ways to recycle and reuse them.

The best way to reuse the books and magazines is to avoid disposing them. This means that valuable information contained in these reading materials can be passed on by donating to a library or any voluntary organization for recreational reading. If people have to buy the book or magazine, not only should they spend more, but reprints only cost you more paper.

You can preserve the magazines and book carefully and gift them to your relatives, neighbors and friends at special occasions if they are interested in reading. Instead of buying magazine copies, see whether you can rent them from local library and return them. This would avoid accumulation of paper and hence there would not be any need to throw.

Contact your local clinics and medical consultants and see whether you can place the magazines in the waiting rooms for the visitors to read. Donate the colorful books to school so that they can reuse the material in art projects.

In case you do not find appropriate places to donate, sell them to a second hand bookstore or a sale. You may help avid readers to find the book that they are exactly looking for!

Magazines contain colorful pages which can be made into other decorative crafts. For example, you can make an attractive paper collage by using these colorful bits of paper and decorate your living room or gift it to your best friend! By this, you are making a precious possession from a trash that you would have otherwise thrown away.

Magazines contain a lot of colorful photos of exotic places, flowers and also useful tips. Make a wish book out of these. For example, collect pictures of flowers that you would want to own in your garden. Make a small collection of exotic places you would not want to miss in your lifetime. Collect useful tips on housekeeping and set deadlines to improve your house.

Traditional recycling method is to place your old book and magazine in a blue bin which would be picked up at regular intervals and taken to agencies which manufacture recycled paper.

Glossy papers need to be avoided as the recycled product made from this paper is not in much demand. In addition, the biggest challenge in recycling these books and magazines is to separate the paper alone from staples, adhesives and other additional materials that have been used for the book. Some of the recycling companies now separate the waste by removing the metallic bindings magnetically!

Jason Ladock

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