For the second consecutive year, Éditions Belin and Veolia are offering the 6,800 middle schools in France a free collection and recycling service for old textbooks.
In 2016, the first “Ecogeste collèges” collected 1,475,000 obsolete textbooks. This year, with the change in language, life and earth sciences, and physics and chemistry curricula from class 5 to class 3, Veolia and Editions Belin could collect as many as 10 million obsolete books. They could then be recycled to make 16 million exercise books with 96 large format pages. The profits from the operation will go to UNICEF to finance actions for children and education (in 2016, the profits funded the production of 17,000 exercise books).
Middle schools at the heart of a circular economy loop
Veolia will collect worn textbooks and used paper directly from participating establishments. The Group will sort and transform them into recycled raw materials, which will then feed the local paper mills to produce recycled paper.
Key figures for “Ecogeste colleges” 2016
1,475,000 books recycled
314,000 participants in 600 middle schools
1,000 tonnes of books collected
775 tonnes of recycled paper, equivalent to 2.4 million 96-page large format exercise books
