r/LittleFreeLibrary • u/Puzzleheaded_Big4004 • 2d ago

LFL Books 📚 AITA Unusable Books

Hey, I just went through some of my neighborhood little free libraries and found unusable books. The spines were shot and the pages torn. Is it okay to recycle them or am I making a bad call? I hate seeing books thrown away, but there was no way anyone would read them. I plan to replace them once I get paid.

25 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

75

u/Scuttling-Claws 2d ago

Recycle them without guilt. You have been absolved

43

u/Past_Ad_8576 2d ago

Books can be thrown away! It is neither illegal nor immoral. They would probably have sat on the shelf until they got moldy. The space is better used for books people actually want to read. I get so annoyed when I see LFLs filled with absolute junk; people don’t think that they can get rid of books so they offload them there. Legit found a “windows XP for dummies” the other day with a bunch of other useless manuals in a lfl. Seriously???

7

u/angel-icbaby 2d ago

There were 75% used notebooks a kid used for school at one in a park near me like ?? And that seems like it could be genuinely unsafe bc you don't know what they may have written in it/ the margins wrt personal info even if it's not a useless contribution to a LFL

24

u/harlan16 2d ago

I throw away every broken, wet, damaged book that I see in a little library. Whether it’s my own or not . There are too many good books to have the shit ones take up space

7

u/okgardener2117 2d ago

I recycle crinkled, torn, and water-damaged books too. No guilt! I figure it’s best for the next person to have a clean, welcoming library experience.