The PSI Chapter welcomes Bulrushed Books as its newest member.
Bulrushed Books, based in Moscow, Idaho, recovers used books and first tries to repair them and find them new homes. “The truest form of stewardship for us is reusing what we have been given,” says Kiki Beauchamp, who founded the company with her husband Mark in late 2016. “Our books can be found on many marketplaces such as Amazon, Alibris, and Abebooks.”
If the repair-and-reuse option won’t work, Bulrushed Books processes the books and works with partner companies—such as textbook giant Chegg—to recycle the components into renewable paper goods such as notebooks, planners, notepads, wrapping paper, and packaging materials. The company does this work through its Book Sustainability Project, which it established to find solutions for the end-of-life books it was generating. This group, which follows the motto “No book wasted,” seeks to achieve a zero-waste future for the book industry by renewing, reusing, recycling, and upcycling used books.
Over the past six years, the Beauchamps have grown Bulrushed Books from a literal mom-and-pop operation (the two of them) to around 20 employees, and the company continues to expand. “We are in the process of building a new warehouse down the road from our current location,” Kiki notes, and the company plans to launch a direct-to-consumer marketplace for its recycled paper products in the coming months.
