I will be the first one to admit that we have done a poor job of publicizing our company’s recycling efforts.  It’s not because we haven’t done anything or have little to show for all of our efforts.  As a matter of fact, we have recycled a staggering amount of used books since we have been in business. 

We started recycling the same year we started the company in 2003 before the “green” movement caught on and before businesses were scrambling to show the public that they were environmentally responsible. 

We recycled because it made sense.  We recycled because our business model revolved around the concept of reusing.  Our idea was simple.  Sell unwanted books online that were discarded by consumers, bookstores, libraries, and thrift stores.  It’s incredible to believe now but in the beginning these unwanted books were being thrown away daily into landfills.  Once we started purchasing these books, they were either sold online, sold wholesale overseas, donated to charities, or recycled by the ton. 

Recycling saves.  It saves energy, natural resources, landfill space, and these days it is helping create jobs.    

Today, just about everything gets recycled in each of our six warehouses across the country including our corporate offices in Washington.  We recycle cardboard, plastics, aluminum, paper, and even wood.  By far, the product we recycle the most is paper. 

From 2003 to 2008, we recycled over 86,000,000 used books.  That’s million with an “M.”  A million of anything is hard to appreciate so I dusted off the part of my brain that does math in an effort to illustrate how much volume this is.

If you took the 86 million used books that we recycled from 2003 to 2008 and piled them on top of each other in one stack, they would reach 7,833,333 feet in the air.  That’s the equivalent of stacking 13,030 Space Needles on top of one another!  Or, if you took the same number of used books and laid them flat side by side, you would create a continuous line 12,215 miles long.  That’s the equivalent of driving from Seattle to Florida 3.5 times! 

That’s a lot of recycling.  As someone once told me, “your recycling efforts are on steroids.”  I agree.  We’re GREEN with MUSCLE.    

Hector Rivas
CEO

We've received so many great ideas and help from you all as we iron out the bugs and continue to improve our new website. 

The biggest improvement we've made over the past week is to our Search Engine.  Originally we had hoped to have a "one size fits all" type of search box at the top of every page, but the accuracy of our results was suffering.  So we added a drop down box to it so you can specify whether you are searching for a title, an author, or an ISBN.  We have also rewritten much of the underlying code.  In our testing we are seeing MUCH improved result accuracy.  If you were one of those who could not find what you were looking for last week, please try again and let us know if it has improved (or not).  We rely very heavily on input from our users, so please tell us.

Some of the other notable improvements:

*You can now save and re-use Billing Addresses, as well as Shipping Addresses.  This was a user suggestion, and we thought it was great.  Hopefully this will help out those of you with different Billing and Shipping.

*We have added a short confirmation message as you add items to your cart.

*We added a direct Check Out link on the cart tab on the top right of the page.

Please keep those comments coming in.  Our primary goal with the new website is to make it easier to use for YOU, the loyal Thrift Books customer.  If there is anything we can do, please keep those ideas coming.

Thanks! -- Mike Ward, C.I.O. Thriftbooks.com

The big news today, of course, is the launch of our new website.  We've redesigned a lot and we hope you like it.  Besides just a newer, better look and feel, the biggest change is our new FREE shipping.  We continue to be committed to giving you the cheapest books on the internet.  In fact, we guarnatee it.  If you can find a cheaper copy of the same book just let us know and we'll match it and knock an additional 10% off the price.  We hope this makes it easier for our customers to purchase the books you want.  No longer will you need to perform mental math to guess what your final checkout price will be.  The price we show, is the total price you'll pay for that book.

In addition, we are giving you an extra 50 cents off any other books you get from the same warehouse in the same order.  Again, no need to perform mental math (or if you are a nerd like me, pull out the calculator from your breast pocket).  This discount is computed for you live as soon as you add your first book to your cart, making it easy to identify where you can save even more money.  We hope you enjoy this new feature.

Also, upgraded is the new and improved search engine.  Just type in what you're looking for and we'll parse through our vast inventory of 5 million books and quickly return to you what you're looking for.  (Some recent searches I have made: "scuba diving", "travel", and "Tomie dePaola").  Try it out and let us know what you think.

And check back often.  Our goal is to keep our blog updated with company news, book reviews, and anything else going on around here that we think is interesting.

Thanks! -- Mike Ward