Berkeleyside

By Lance Knobel

Berkeleyans tend to be generous, civic-minded people, so the bright blue bins in supermarket parking lots marked “Donate Books” could inspire thoughts about clearing clutter from some shelves. Think again. The bins are run by for-profit Thrift Recycling Management, based in Lakewood, Washington. In Berkeley, the bins are now at Andronico’s and Safeway locations. Nationally only about 25% of the books are given to non-profits (locally, Safeway has a different arrangement with no books being sold).

According to a recent investigation by D. K. Row for The Oregonian, Thrift Recycling Management (TRM) has revenues of about $26 million a year and 200 employees. The books collected in the bins are sorted into three groups: about one-quarter are sold through online sites like Amazon, about half are pulped, and the final one-quarter is given to non-profits. Most of these go to Reading Tree, a non-profit registered in Utah. Row’s investigation revealed unusually close links between TRM and Reading Tree. TRM President Jeff Mullin is also president of Reading Tree. (Reading Tree’s 2009 990 form can be seen here. The organization had gross receipts of over $10 million in 2009.)

“They’re not being straightforward,” said Diane Davenport, president of Friends of the Berkeley Public Library. “TRM made $26 million last year from books that they’d gotten out of these blue bins.”

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