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Fairfax County Public Library has received an honorable mention in the 2026 Virginia Governor’s Environmental Excellence Awards for a program that resells or recycles books no longer suitable for its collection.
The two-year pilot began in May 2025 as an alternative to paying for discarded books to be recycled. Under the program, outdated, unneeded or irreparably damaged books are delivered to ThriftBooks.
The company evaluates the materials, offering suitable books for sale on the secondary market and sending others to a recycler to be turned into paper pulp. Revenue generated by the program returns to the library’s collection budget to buy more books for customers.
Working with the Fairfax County Department of Procurement and Material Management, the library sent more than 185,000 books to ThriftBooks between May 2025 and February 2026. About 121,000 were recycled, while 63,000 were offered for sale. Roughly half of the books listed for sale had been purchased by the end of that period.
The library said the project supports Fairfax County’s Zero Waste initiative and avoided an estimated 119 cubic yards of landfill waste. It also saved 624,800 gallons of water and 366,000 kilowatt-hours of energy, prevented 5,300 pounds of greenhouse-gas emissions and preserved more than 2,000 trees through pulping.
The Governor’s Environmental Excellence Awards recognize environmental and conservation work in sustainability, environmental projects, government greening, land conservation and implementation of the Virginia Outdoors Plan.
Businesses, industrial facilities, nonprofit organizations and government agencies are eligible for the annual awards, which are administered by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality in partnership with the Department of Conservation and Recreation.