[Winter] 2013
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Hundreds of books line the bookshelves at Olathe Station Courtesy of Courtney Child
he endeavor started out with one question: why are books constantly spilling out of the dumpster behind the Olathe HPB store? What a juxtaposition a dumpster full of books is. Some teenagers have been known to occasionally use the books for “booking” people’s yards, or throwing hundreds of books from the Olathe Half Price dumpster onto people’s front lawns. Collin Thomas, assistant manager of the Olathe store, explained the process of deciding to throw away certain books. “If you saw some of the boxes they came out of, you wouldn’t want to touch them. We throw away what we have to throw away. If you want to touch cockroach-infested books, you can. And trust me, we are working on ways so that people do not go into our dumpster because we don’t want those books being donated or thrown into people’s yards. Trust me, if we can donate it, we will. There’s a lot of stuff we can’t donate because of mold, disease, rat feces; we keep gloves and masks around here because of what we deal with.” The district manager, Susan Cooper, commented on the manner of how the books are thrown away. “Some books are water damaged, pet damaged, ripped, torn, or highlighted, so there are some
things we have to throw away that would fall into those categories.” Is there a certain amount that they have to get rid of in terms of highlighting? And how much is too much water damage? After learning about the situation, a Hawk’s Eye staffer brought in some of the books and VHS tapes that he had dumpster dived to retrieve. They were all in good shape-a Star Wars trilogy set, nice records, and quality copies of random books. The Blackbob Elementary School library clerk wondered if the right precautions were being taken as to discarding books. “It’s mostly because of publishing rights,” she stated. “When I worked at Walden Books, we had to rip off the covers of the books to take them home. You can’t just take them willy-nilly. You’re not supposed to take them.” After that chat, the question remained: Is it just the Olathe Half Price station that was throwing away books? The national website stated that all Half Price Books locations donated to over a hundred organizations instead of throwing them away. The Olathe store had said that they donated to many places too, but the dumpster out back raised questions. Senior Austin Brennecke said, “The manager of the store told me after I stated that I took books from the dumpster every week that I could take them as I pleased.” Did they actually throw these books away for a reason, or were they just dumped because they had no more room? Reporters noted that the store was stacked with boxes of books waiting to be sorted. The Hawk’s Eye inquired to the answer to the unanswered question on the National HPB webiste. “If the books in the dumpster are a safety hazard, then why doesn’t it say so? Why is the dumpster so easy to get into?” The Hawk’s Eye received an email back from Susan Cooper, the district manager, stating, “We would discourage anyone from tampering with items in dumpsters and are currently working with the landlords of our Olathe location about the dumpster maintenance.” Three days later, the dumpster was still filled with books. So the question is, what will happen to the thousands of abandoned books? The fate of the books lies in someone’s hands, and only time will tell who that is.
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