The Kathryn A. Martin library annex, which substantially predates the main library building and originally served as the campus’s Health Sciences library, will undergo renovations sometime in the next year or so. This part of the library houses journals and the library’s Archives and Special Collections. In preparation, library staff had to develop plans for moving and storing a large amount of material during the renovation.
Staff spent hours, days, and weeks reviewing the library’s journals to pare down the collection to make it easier to move. Many journals available in the library as physical copies now exist in digital formats or are available at other libraries through Get It and Interlibrary Loan. The remaining physical journals are being moved to the library’s 3rd floor.
A byproduct of this process was a plethora of equipment: bookends and magazine holders. In a commitment to keeping things green - one of the campus's ongoing initiatives through the Campus & Climate Action Plan - library staff connected with Waste Management to inquire specifically how the plastic magazine holders could be recycled. To identify the type of plastic the holders were made from, a sample was sent to the Twin Cities campus for testing - the holders were so old that they did not have a recycling designation stamped on them. Tests revealed that the material was primarily composed of #5 - Polypropylene or #6 - Polystyrene.
Waste Management recommended Replay Workshop in Proctor, MN, a business that specializes in recycling plastics; they shred, melt, and mold the plastic into game components and other items. On the retail side of their business, Atlas Games, they sell 1000-pound bags of shredded plastic that can be used to make injection-molded items.
Katie MacDonald, one of the library staff working on the project, said, “We wanted to keep them [the plastic magazine holders] out of the landfill and sustainably protect our environment from microplastics. Working with Replay Workshop seemed like a really good opportunity. Given that the library also has a sizable games collection, you never know when those recycled plastics might come around again.”
John Nephew, President of Atlas Games, said, “A huge amount of plastic that could be recycled with relative ease winds up going to landfill simply because of the limitations of the recycling collection and sorting system. We're delighted that we can keep these magazine holders from UMD's library out of the landfill, and transform them into new and useful products.”