Right, we need to talk about that advert.
Last week we ran a Facebook ad for ReReadz in Bracknell. The picture showed our local bandstand turned into a tiny bookshop. It was AI generated. Some people loved it. Some people absolutely hated it. Both reactions fair enough.
Two comments stuck in my head. They were good comments. They deserved better than a quick reply under the post, so here goes.
What you said
The first one was short: "Better for the planet but uses generative AI to promote it, well done." Sarcasm noted. And honestly? Its a fair question. If we say we are good for the planet, does using AI undercut that?
The second went further. AI tools have learned from "all of the uncredited texts and images... from actual authors and artists", and using them makes us complicit. That one hit harder, because books matter to us. We will come back to it.
First, the actual problem
Before we argue about one image, here is the context. The numbers on book waste are grim. I checked them properly because I didnt want to exaggerate:
- About 26 million books are thrown away in the UK every year. That is over 70,000 books a day going to landfill or incineration.
- Books in landfill do not just rot quietly. Paper breaks down without oxygen and releases methane, which is around 25 times worse than CO2 for warming.
- A new paperback is roughly 2 to 3 kg of CO2 once you count paper, printing, ink and delivery. Hardbacks are more.
- Book publishing uses millions of trees a year globally, and a lot of printed books are pulped without ever being read.
- Paper uses a surprising amount of water. One sheet can take several litres, so every book kept in use saves the water that would have gone into replacing it.
- Most UK homes have dozens of books sitting unread, usually boxed up and eventually binned.
Every one of those books was loved once. That is what we are trying to change. One rehomed book at a time. Every pre-loved book that finds a new reader on ReReadz is one less in landfill and one less new copy that needs printing.
Does the AI image cancel that out?
Training big AI models uses serious energy. The industry has to own that. But making one image with an AI tool is tiny compared to training. Independent estimates say a single AI image is about the same energy as running a laptop for a few minutes. An AI text query is closer to a few seconds of video streaming.
Now weigh that against the point of the advert. If that one image helps even a hundred books get reused, that is hundreds of kilograms of CO2 avoided and a hundred stories saved from the tip. The maths is not even close.
Still, the comment makes a fair point about habits. Sustainability is not just a calculation. We try to use AI only when it actually helps, not because it is there.
The harder bit: authors and artists
This is the one that matters most. We are a company built on loving books. Our whole business exists because writers wrote things worth keeping. If AI has been trained on creative work without permission, that is a real problem. Courts and politicians are arguing about it right now and we are watching closely.
I am not going to pretend I can solve an industry-wide issue from a spare bedroom in Berkshire. But I can be straight about where we stand:
- Books are what we sell, not the raw material for AI. We do not use AI to write books, summarise books for sale, or copy any author's voice. The words inside the books on ReReadz were written by humans. That is why they matter.
- We are on the side of writers. Buy new when you can, support authors directly, back the campaigns and charities getting books to people who need them.
AI is not going anywhere, so the question is how we use it
Here is the uncomfortable truth: generative AI is already everywhere. It is in your phone, your search engine, your word processor, probably your supermarket. The question is not "should AI exist?" any more. It is "do we use it thoughtfully, or let the people who use it carelessly win?"
For a one-person startup trying to chip away at 26 million wasted books a year, this is practical. Used well, AI is part of why ReReadz can exist.
And lets be honest, this stuff is already ordinary. The same tech that made our advert image also runs the spell-check on your phone, the route planner that finds your nearest charity shop, and the search your kid uses for homework. The AI is already in your pocket. The question is whether you point it at something worthwhile.
Listing books in seconds. Scan a barcode and AI helps pull out the title, author, edition and category. For someone with fifty books to sell, that is the difference between listing them this weekend and the box staying in the loft for three more years. More books listed means more cheap books for readers.
Finding the right book. Paige can answer things like "what's a good cosy mystery under a fiver?" using our own help content first, with AI only as a limited fallback. Sometimes a quick nudge is what turns a browser into a reader.
Keeping the lights on. Tools that let one person do the work of ten are how we keep fees low, keep buyer protection affordable, and actually spend time on what matters: the books, the sellers and the readers.
The alternative is not a world without AI. It is a world where only the huge corporations can afford to compete, and the small independent planet-friendly options just disappear. We would rather use the tool well, in the open, with our values intact.
Our promise
So here is where we land. In writing, so you can hold us to it:
- We will keep the human things human. The books, the community, the sellers' stories, the blog posts you disagree with: all real, all ours.
- We will use AI as a tool for access and affordability, never as a replacement for creativity.
- We will keep listening, even when the comments sting.
- And we will keep the main thing the main thing: getting pre-loved books out of lofts and into the hands of new readers, and out of landfill. Good for your pocket, good for the planet.
To everyone who commented, including the two quoted here: thank you. You held us to a standard, and that is exactly what a community is for. The comments section is open, and so is our inbox.
Carry on the conversation. We have opened a thread in The Reading Room if you want to argue about this properly. Come and tell us where you land.
Now if you will excuse us, there are 26 million books a year to rehome.
Where the numbers come from
A few people will ask, so here is the list. We rounded some figures for readability. Where we could not find a UK-specific number we used the best comparable estimate and said so.
- 26 million books discarded in the UK each year: Book trade press estimates, cross-referenced with WRAP data on paper and print waste.
- Methane from landfill paper (~25x CO2 warming potential): IPCC reports on methane's 100-year warming potential.
- 2 to 3 kg CO2 per new paperback: Carbon Trust and Environmental Paper Network life-cycle assessments.
- Millions of trees for publishing: Environmental Paper Network reports on fibre use.
- Litres of water per sheet: Water Footprint Network and UNESCO research.
- Dozens of unread books per UK home: National Literacy Trust and book charity surveys.
- AI image/query energy comparisons: Independent estimates from Hugging Face, MIT, and Strubell et al. at UMass, scaled to single use.