Birmingham’s Unwanted Books — Free Doorstep Collection

Shelves have a way of filling themselves in a city like Birmingham. With well over a million people living here — spread across everything from leafy Harborne to busy Erdington — and several universities constantly cycling through reading lists, it’s no surprise that books accumulate faster than most of us notice. When the moment comes to reclaim some space and pass them on, Anglo Doorstep Collections makes it genuinely simple: we come to you, free of charge, so there’s no lugging boxes onto public transport or working out where the nearest drop-off point is.

Paperbacks, hardbacks, children’s picture books, cookbooks, reference works, CDs, DVDs and music albums are all welcome, provided they’re dry and in a reasonable condition. Whether you’ve just finished a house move, completed a university course, or simply decided that three overloaded bookcases are two too many, handing your collection on to new readers is far more satisfying than watching it gather dust — or end up as waste.

Book a Free Collection

How the Collection Works

What We Collect

There’s no minimum quantity — one bag of paperbacks is just as welcome as a full shelf’s worth. Pack your items in small, manageable boxes or bags and we’ll take care of the rest. We accept:

From the City Centre to the Suburbs

Birmingham City Council oversees one of the largest urban areas in England, and that scale is exactly why a doorstep model suits it so well. We collect from right across the city — Edgbaston, Selly Oak, Kings Heath, Hall Green, Erdington, Harborne and beyond — so you never need to plot a route across town to reach a drop-off point. Our coverage extends to Solihull, Sutton Coldfield and West Bromwich too, meaning households throughout the wider area can book in just as easily.

The end of the academic year tends to produce a particularly healthy stack of course books, subject guides and reading-list titles near Birmingham’s universities. Those are precisely the kinds of volumes that other students and enthusiastic readers are glad to discover. If you’re clearing a student house, splitting donations into a few smaller, manageable bags rather than one unwieldy crate makes things far more straightforward on collection day.

Who Tends to Book

One Visit Covers It All

Books and media are rarely the only things you want to clear. Set them out alongside clothes, toys or kitchenware and our driver takes everything in one trip — no need to arrange separate collections. If the amount is particularly large, we can split it across more than one visit without any fuss. We’ll send your collection time slot through the evening before your collection day, so you’ll know exactly when to expect us.

We also serve nearby Solihull and Coventry — you’ll find the full picture on our collections near you page.

What Happens to Your Donations

Every readable title goes to the charities and reuse partners we work with across the West Midlands, where books are resold or passed directly to new readers. A large percentage of proceeds goes to charity, helping raise vital funds for good causes — so clearing a few shelves at home has a real impact beyond your own four walls. Only items too damaged to be used at all go for recycling, and even then that’s very much a last resort.

There’s a meaningful environmental dimension here too, and it’s worth pausing on it for a moment. When books, CDs and DVDs go to landfill, the paper, card and plastic they contain gradually break down and release methane — a potent greenhouse gas. Reusing them avoids that entirely: no new pulping, no fresh printing runs, no transport of newly manufactured copies, and a genuine saving in both water and CO₂ compared with producing replacements from scratch. According to published UK estimates from sources such as WRAP, those savings are real, even if they’re difficult to quantify precisely for any one donation. Across a city with well over a million residents, the cumulative effect of choosing to donate rather than discard adds up in ways that matter for Birmingham as a whole — helping keep the city tidier, reducing unnecessary waste, and cutting the kind of fly-tipping that blights local streets when unwanted items have nowhere useful to go.

“In a city of Birmingham’s size — constantly moving, reorganising and renewing — keeping books and media in circulation rather than sending them to landfill makes a genuinely significant difference, both for local good causes and for the environment.”