Combining their well-known passion for environmental and literacy causes, Princeton area Starbucks are among the first consumer shops in the nation to rollout the KinderHarvest magazine recycling drive for children and families learning to read. KinderHarvest breathes a new life into magazines that would otherwise be discarded and destroyed by collecting recent, gently used copies and sending them to at-risk children and families. Wooden harvest bins have been set up at participating Starbucks locations where consumers can drop of magazines for all ages. The magazines will be delivered to children and families served by nearby homeless and domestic violence shelters, as well as in bags of groceries picked up at food pantries. KinderHarvest gets wonderful magazines into the hands, homes, and hearts of children and families who want to learn and love to read. The summer, when children are away from school, is the most important time to reinforce families reading together.
KinderHarvest is like food gleaning, a practice that is thousands of years old, where crops left in the field are gathered by humanitarians to feed hungry people. Except this harvest gleans magazines that would have ended up at the curb to feed children and families hungry to read and succeed, recycling the magazines we all love to meet local literacy needs. This first-ever program combines the three R’s of education with the three R’s of recycling to promote the three R’s of magazine literacy: Read, Rescue, and Reuse. So far, KinderHarvest has collected thousands of surplus magazines from publishers, and sent them to children and families served by food banks and to children rebuilding their young lives from Hurricane Katrina. This effort expands the KinderHarvest program to create a national model that engages businesses and consumers to meet literacy needs at their own grassroots community level.