The reuse of textbooks should be promoted to save resources, says an article in the Beijing News. An excerpt follows:

It has been reported that the average lifespan of textbooks is only half a year in China, falling far short of the five years in the United States.

In China, there are 220 million students that consume 3 billion textbooks annually.

If every textbook costs 15 yuan (US$1.85), it means 45 billion yuan (US$5.5 billion) worth of textbooks end up as waste annually.

If the average weight of the textbooks each student uses every year is 2.5 kilograms, 550,000 tons of paper are required to produce them.

It is estimated that more than 20 trees are needed to produce a ton of paper, so 11 million trees are needed to manufacture 550,000 tons of paper.

In other words, if the lifespan of textbooks could be extended for one more year, 45 billion yuan or 11 million trees could be saved.

At a time when we are building a conservation-oriented society, such a staggering level of waste is unbelievable.

Textbook recycling is the norm in other countries such as the United States, Germany and Japan. But in China the practice is almost non-existent.

Publishing houses, printing mills and textbook distributors who make huge profits of course do not subscribe to the idea of reusing textbooks.

Currently, education departments have the final say over whether textbooks may be reused or not. As such, if they have the resolve, the recycling of textbooks could be put into practice.

In China, 2 billion yuan (US$247 million) is enough to send 10 million impoverished dropouts back to school. Think what 45 billion yuan could do. Clearly the total saved by reusing textbooks could contribute a lot to the country's education system.

(China Daily September 20, 2005)