Exmouth has a seafront, a ferry across to Starcross, and, in thousands of its homes, a bookcase that’s quietly become too full to close properly. With around 35,000 people living in and around the town, plus the steady traffic of holidaymakers who leave a paperback behind on the windowsill each summer, it’s little wonder that books, CDs and DVDs pile up faster than anyone plans for. Anglo Doorstep Collections exists to deal with that without any fuss: we collect straight from your doorstep, entirely free of charge, so there’s no drive to the tip and no box balanced awkwardly on the car seat.
“A seaside town like Exmouth sees books move through its households constantly — holiday reads, school texts, old favourites. Keeping them in circulation rather than in a skip is a small decision with a real effect.”
Why a Doorstep Collection Suits Exmouth So Well
No trip into town, no queue at the tip — just books leaving from where they already sit.
Exmouth isn’t a sprawling city, but that doesn’t mean getting rid of unwanted books is effortless. The charity shops along the Strand and on Rolle Street are generous with what they’ll take in person, but carrying several boxes down on foot, or finding somewhere to park near the seafront in August, is its own kind of hassle. A council bulky-waste collection, meanwhile, usually comes with a fee and a wait for a slot. Booking a free doorstep collection cuts both problems out at once: you choose a day, you leave your items out, and someone comes directly to you. It costs nothing, and it saves the kind of afternoon most people would rather spend on the beach than in a car park.
Keeping Good Books in Use
Reuse sits above recycling for a reason, and a readable book is the clearest example of why.
Waste specialists talk about a hierarchy — reduce, reuse, recycle, in that order of preference — and a book in reasonable condition is about as straightforward a case for reuse as you’ll find. It doesn’t need reprocessing, melting down or re-pulping; it just needs a new reader. Passing on a well-thumbed novel, a cookbook you never quite got round to, or a child’s picture book that’s been outgrown means someone else gets the use of it, often at a fraction of the price it would cost new, while a charity benefits from the sale. That’s the circular economy working at a very human scale — not abstract, just one household’s shelf becoming another’s.
Useful to know: DVDs and CDs are often bundled with their original cases and inserts — keeping them together means they’re ready to sell on as soon as they arrive with a charity, rather than needing to be matched up later.
Clearing Shelves After Life’s Changes
A full bookcase is often a sign of something else happening in the house.
Requests for a collection rarely come out of nowhere. Someone downsizing from a larger Woodbury property to a smaller place nearby doesn’t want to bring three decades of hardbacks with them. A family in Budleigh Salterton clearing a parent’s home finds shelves of well-loved fiction that deserve a new reader rather than a skip. Students finishing courses in the area leave behind textbooks and reading-list titles that the next cohort would happily use. Whatever the reason — a house move, a bereavement, simply deciding that four bookcases is three too many — the result is the same pile of boxes by the door, and the same simple way to move them on.
“Clearing a loft or a spare room in Exmouth almost always turns up more books than anyone remembers owning — and nearly all of them are perfectly fit for someone else to enjoy.”
What We Take, and How to Leave It Out
Preparation takes minutes, and there’s no minimum or maximum amount to worry about.
We collect books of all kinds — paperbacks, hardbacks, children’s picture books, cookbooks, atlases and reference titles, along with CDs, DVDs and music albums. A single bag is just as welcome as several boxes, and there’s nothing to sort or categorise beforehand. The only real requirement is that items are dry and in a condition that means someone else could actually read or play them. A quick checklist before collection day:
Pack books into small, liftable boxes or sturdy bags rather than one overloaded crate
Keep CDs and DVDs with their cases where possible
Make sure everything is dry — damp books and discs can’t be resold
Leave the boxes somewhere accessible, such as a porch or by the front step
No need to be home — we’ll collect as agreed and send your time slot the evening before
Good to know: there’s no minimum amount and no maximum either — whether it’s a carrier bag or a full set of bookcases emptied out, we’ll take it in one visit.
Covering Exmouth and the Surrounding Villages
From the seafront to the villages inland, the same free service applies.
We collect throughout Exmouth itself — from the estates near the Imperial Recreation Ground to the quieter streets up towards Withycombe and Phear Park — and extend the same service out to Lympstone, Budleigh Salterton, Woodbury and Topsham. Devon’s council areas each manage their own household waste arrangements, and bulky item collections through the local authority typically involve a booking fee and a wait; arranging a free pickup with us tends to be both quicker and considerably cheaper. If you’ve also got other items to clear, our driver can take clothes, toys or kitchenware in the same visit, and for particularly large clearances we’re happy to split things across more than one trip. You’ll find the wider picture of where we work on our collections near you page.
Where Your Books End Up, and Why It Matters
A shelf cleared in Exmouth becomes stock on a shelf somewhere else entirely.
Every book, CD and DVD we collect that’s in a resellable condition goes on to charities and reuse partners working across Devon, where it’s sold on or passed to a new reader. A large percentage of proceeds goes to charity, so clearing out a bookcase ends up supporting good causes well beyond your own street. Only items too worn, damp or damaged to be used by anyone go for recycling, and that’s always the last option rather than the first.
There’s a genuine environmental upside too, even if it’s modest in any single household. Books, CDs and DVDs left to rot in landfill break down slowly, and the paper, card and plastic involved release methane as they do. Keeping them in use instead avoids all of that — no fresh pulping, no new printing run, no transport of replacement copies from a warehouse somewhere else in the country. Published UK estimates, including figures from WRAP, suggest that reuse saves meaningful amounts of water and CO₂ compared with manufacturing new copies from scratch, though the exact saving from any one box of books is impossible to pin down precisely. Multiply that across a town the size of Exmouth, and the surrounding villages besides, and choosing to donate rather than bin a few shelves’ worth of books adds up to something worth doing.
Ready to Donate?
It’s completely free — we collect directly from your doorstep.
