In the UK, elderly customers at charity shops are buying up hardback books – as cheap fuel.
Cheaper than coal?
One assistant said: ‘Book burning seems terribly wrong but we have to get rid of unsold stock for pennies and some of the pensioners say the books make ideal slow-burning fuel for fires and stoves.
A lot of them buy up large hardback volumes so they can stick them in the fire to last all night.’
read the full article in metro.co.uk, Pensioners burn books for warmth.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh boy- let me think about this…
Michelle Gartner´s last blog ..Almost Vintage – Looking Back at 1990
It’s too bad they focus on the hardcovers. There are way too many paperbacks in the world, and it might be better to burn them than put them in landfills.
Dot´s last blog ..Comment on Blogging in 2010 by Patricia
Ya, there are probably a lot of crappy hardcover books that need burning anyway. The sad part of the story is not that books are being burned, however — it’s that elderly people are living in such poverty in one of the richest nations in the world
XUP´s last blog ..Shortcuts
I don’t know what to think about this. I don’t think the value of a book is more than the warmth of a human being. But it is sad to see books selling new in bookstores for $18-24 and then being used for fuel. They lose value faster than a car out of the dealer’s lot. XUP has a good point about the poverty of our elderly. Sad.
teeni´s last blog ..Shopping Carts Thieves
It is a measure of how much we care about the life of the elderly that our societies are unable to provide them proper and inexpensive fuel to stay warm.
Rummuser´s last blog ..Cowboy Joe!
Michelle – I had to think about it, too. Then I got to thinking about all of the books that I wouldn’t be able to sell if I wanted to. But, heat is not an issue for us and, if we need to use the fireplace, I’ve got a couple of acres of trees, so I probably won’t be burning any of my books to keep warm.
Dot – I agree about the paperbacks, though it would be better to recycle them somehow.
XUP, teeni, Rummuser – I agree. Part of the problem, too, is that household utility bills in the United Kingdom are rising steeply and are forecast to skyrocket by a factor of four by the end of the decade due to measures taken to meet government imposed emissions reduction targets. So, the plight of the poor of all ages is only going to get worse.
As well, and unfortunately, the latest forecasts on the Arctic Oscillation is that it will continue in the current negative phase, the deepest since at least 1950 — the earliest that records are available for it — through the end of the northern hemisphere winter.
What a sad story, but at least it’s better than the books going to a land fill. I agree that the poor are going to suffer the most from the rapid changes in the world. It’s going to be rough ride for most of mankind, I fear.
Jean Browman–Cheerful Monk´s last blog ..What Makes You Laugh?
I go to thrift stores a lot and I see a lot of things people should have thrown out to begin with- so I don’t have too many problems with it. The more I think about it- the more I think it is okay the book burning, not the problem of pensioners having to burn books for fuel. I think a lot of old encyclopedias are obsolete now and a lot of information is electronically available- so burning things like that really probably doesn’t hurt anything. I guess the reason I had to think about it was because I had just seen a show prior to your post about having volunteer emergency salvage teams ready when fires break out in old European palaces. A lot of the old palaces house art and book collections of great historical value. The teams in Britain were learning from curators of a German palace which held a library collection that burned. I wish I could find the name of the program, but I couldn’t.
Michelle Gartner´s last blog ..Win a Buddha Inspired Necklace by Demure Artistic Designs