Turkish Garbage Collectors Build a Library from Thrown-Away Books

Many of us have looked at our own bookcases and thought, “Yeah, this is probably getting out of hand.” Perhaps we decided to downsize as a result, selling our old books, giving them away to friends, or donating them to charity. Maybe, if some of us are totally honest, we might have tossed a few into the trash.

In fact, it appears this brutal method of book disposal is more common than you might think… or at least, more common than many of us would like to admit. That was the experience of a group of refuse collectors near the Turkish capital of Ankara, who rescued more than 6,000 books from the ignominy of the landfill.

An Emerging Pattern in Ankara

Back in 2017, in the municipality of Çankaya in Ankara Province, local refuse collectors and sanitation workers began to notice something unusual. Amid all the detritus and trash that was being thrown out by the district’s population, there were books. As it turned out… a lot of books.

Saddened to see so many precious volumes being destroyed or lost forever, they decided to do something about it. They began gathering books out of the trash they sifted through every day, cleaning them up, sanitizing them, and bringing them back to life.

Plenty of the books were in pretty good condition, so the team kept them, amassing a large number of titles over several months of collecting. These lucky books, rescued by the sanitation teams, were given a new lease of life. Council employees, eager for something new to read, began borrowing the books, and their family members got in on the act too.

Creating a Library

When the mayor of Çankaya – Alper Tasdelen – heard about what his hard-working refuse collectors were doing, he was inspired. The local authorities began the task of formalizing the library, creating something that could serve the community, and bring joy and knowledge to the people of Çankaya.

“We started to discuss the idea of creating a library from these books. And when everyone supported it, this project happened,” Tasdelen said.

So the old brick factory building, located on the site of the Çankaya sanitation department’s headquarters, became an official library for the city. As well as lending books on two-week loans, the location has become a central community hub – there is a lounge area where people can read, and a chessboard for those who want to put their skills to the test.

As the library is close to popular bicycle routes, it’s become a regular spot for cyclists, who pop into the building to drink tea, take a break, and enjoy a good book. And there are plenty of good books to read… more than 6,000 in total, carefully organized into sections such as fiction, scientific research, and graphic novels.

A Growing Project

The project quickly caught the attention of the wider public, and people began sending their own books directly to the library. While this made the life of the refuse collectors a little bit easier, it also brought a few challenges of its own.

There quickly became too many books to deal with. When the Smithsonian Magazine reported on the project back in 2018, they stated that 1,500 books still needed to be organized and catalogued. What began as a sort of ‘book rescue’ service had rapidly gotten out of hand.

But the local government was fully behind the project. They have since employed a full-time librarian to manage the facility and assist those who want to borrow books.

The irony of so much demand for books that other people had thrown away was not lost on Tasdelen. “On one hand, there were those who were leaving these books on the streets,” he said. “On the other hand, others were looking for these books.”

Serving Turkey’s Communities with Literature

Turkey has a long and proud literary history. From late medieval bards like Mihri Hatun and Sinan Seyhi, to the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk, the Turkish nation and the Ottoman Empire that preceded it have provided us with a rich patchwork of prose and poetry.

But modern Turkey has a problem – its people are crying out for great books to read, and yet there are not enough libraries to serve them. In 2017, it was reported that there was only a single library per 70,000 people in the country. Compare this to the 1:6,200 ratio reported in the European Union around the same time, and you can see the disparity.

The library at Çankaya is just one institution, but it is a step in the right direction. The district’s refuse collectors and sanitation workers have created something amazing, and it is providing a valuable service to the local community, on top of the valuable service these teams already provide.