Q I have hundreds of books to throw out. Are there charities that will collect from my home?

A It’s one thing to breed piles of dusty CDs and old books in corners of the house — I do that naturally — but it is quite another to get them out the door and off to an eco-friendly reincarnation. It is transportation of waste that often trips us up.

Whether you can save your back and get someone else to do it depends on where you live. If you’re London-based or in the South of England, book charities are likely to have volunteer collectors in your area who’ll relieve you of your literary burden, so long as you have a decent number of books that are in good shape. Try Amnesty International for its chain of secondhand bookshops;call 020-7033 1688 to arrange collection.

Education Aid, a charity that sends books and other materials to countries in the developing world, also picks up, but the books need to be less than ten years old ( educationaid.org.uk).

Sadly, Book Aid, a similar charity, reports a decline in the number of volunteers doing collection rounds so you’d be lucky to receive a home visit ( bookaid.org).

For anyone who has plenty of time to spare, another option would be to join a book-swapping forum, such as readitswapit.co.uk. You submit the books you want to get rid of, which gives you access to its online library. When you’ve found something you like you are given the owner’s e-mail so that you can offer your own titles. When you’re both content with your choices, you post each other the books.

The one thing you cannot do with books is to recycle them in the normal way. The glue that binds them messes up the paper recycling process. So stay away from the green bin.

Tempting as it may be to kill off your teenage Jilly Cooper collection; you might have grown bored of her hero Rupert Campbell- Black, but for someone else the fun is just beginning.

Q What is my disposable coffee cup made from and can it be recycled?

A Next time you grab a latte, spare a thought for the mountain of waste is produced by disposable cups. In the UK, we drink 70 million cups of coffee daily. A large proportion of these are consumed from ceramic mugs at home but, when we’re out and craving a fix, what we end up with is likely to be a paper cup with a plastic lining. The plastic, often polyethylene, keeps the paper cup intact by protecting it from the liquid, but it also makes it unrecyclable.

There are exceptions. Pret A Manger uses such a thin layer of plastic that it does not mess up the recycling process if the cup is treated as paper. Meanwhile, Starbucks is offering a 10p discount on its coffee if you bring in your own mug. This is not something that’s widely publicised, perhaps because the coffee giant’s marketing boys would rather you waltzed around town with a cup with great big Starbucks logo on it than with a chipped mug from home.

To be fair, Starbucks has introduced cups made from 10 per cent postconsumer recycled content in the US (made from the stuff we recycle in our homes). And it might soon happen over here.

The company claims this shift will stop 11,300 tonnes of wood being consumed (78,000 trees) over the first year and save enough energy to power 640 homes a year. This only drives home the dent the remaining 90 per cent of the cups content is having.

BLOG WATCH

My favourite piece of advice last week came from the vegetable fans blog wannaveg.com. It pointed out that since rearing animals required so many resources, one of the best things you could do was to have a meat-free day every week. You would then save 84,000 gallons of water and 245lb of grain a year. And it’s not just the planet that would benefit. As Rita said when I posted this on the Eco-Worrier blog: “Our bodies aren’t intended to eat the quantities of meat that most people put away.” Barnie suggested eating “the parts of the animal that most people don’t want” as another way to make meat eating more sustainable. Hannah favours calling on the Vegetarian Society ( vegsoc.org) and its online recipe resource.

I came across a delicious globe artichoke, green bean and pine nut risotto. But is it artichoke season? No. Wait till next month if you want your plate to be truly green.

GREENIE POINTS

CLICK IT

The age of cheap oil will end sometime in the next 30 years. To prepare for life after oil, a group of towns led by Totnes, in Devon, have decided not to wait for the Government but aim to plan their energy policy alone. Read all about their efforts at transitiontowns.org.

SKIP IT

Don’t fill your home with MDF shelves. It contains formaldehyde which the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified as “carcinogenic to humans” in 2004. Look for formaldehyde-free materials ( www.aecb.net).

DO IT

Never leave home without lippie? Then you’ll eat about five tubes of the stuff in your lifetime, according to Kim Erickson, author of Drop-Dead Gorgeous (McGraw Hill), which exposes the hidden dangers of cosmetics. Not a nice thought if your favourite lipstick is made from petrol derivatives. If you stick to Plant Love lippie (below) by Cargo Cosmetics, you can plant the case, which is made from corn and wildflower seeds, when it’s empty and watch it bloom.

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