Last Saturday I visited a local Christian Aid stall. There were loads of lovely plants, well presented and at decent prices. There were second-hand tools, old but still useful. There were delicious cakes selling like, well, hot-cakes. And there were mountains of books.
Ahhh, the books. Well, lets just say that some people seemed to have taken advantage of the 20p price-tag to off-load their old junk. I felt so sorry for the volunteers, having to root-out mouldy tombs from amongst the many super and well-loved donations.
Why do some people seem to think its alright to offload books that smell, have missing pages, or (worse still) have turned green to charities? Yes, of course there are still uses for may of these books (such as paper-mache items, scrap-booking etc), but selling them to other people is not one of them.
I'm definatly against pulping usable books. I hate when I know sellable books are being scraped. I love collecting slightly tatty books and giving them some love. But, face it, there can be a time when books can no longer serve a good purpose as reading matter.
A charity shop or stall is not a garbage dump! Volunteers have better things to do that sift through your ghastly remains! If you'd find it digusting to pick it up then ditch it. Otherwise you're wasting the time of other people or, worse still, devaluing the worth of the stock for a charity you wanted to support. Please think people!
If you're still with me then thankyou for reading my rant. And feel free to share your own in the comments.
