ValueBooks' Hon Datta Picnic Blanket is made from 70% recycled book paper — and designed to get people reading outdoors.
Every day, around 30,000 books arrive at ValueBooks' warehouse in Nagano, Japan. About half find new owners. The other half — surplus stock the market won't absorb — would normally go straight to paper recycling. The company's response is a product line called the "Hon Datta" series (Japanese for "used to be a book"), which transforms those would-be castoffs into new paper goods. The latest addition to the line? A picnic blanket made largely from the pulped pages of old books, timed for Japan's cherry blossom season.
The Hon Datta Picnic Blanket* is roughly 70% recycled book paper, with the remaining 30% made up of other recycled paper. A laminate backing makes it waterproof enough for damp grass, and the surface is designed to resist picking up blades of grass and leaves. At 90 x 135 cm, it's sized for one or two people, lightweight and foldable, and comes with a rubber band for storage. Traces of printed text occasionally show through the material — the manufacturer leaves these in deliberately, as a reminder of the object's previous life. The blanket retails for JPY 2,750 (around USD/EUR 17) and is available through ValueBooks' online store and its physical "Book and Tea NABO" café.
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ValueBooks, which achieved B Corp certification in 2024, has been running its "don't want to throw away books" project since 2022, producing notebooks from recycled manga, magazines and general titles. The picnic blanket takes the concept a step further: rather than simply giving paper a second life as paper, it creates a context for spending time with books outdoors. By spreading a blanket made from books, the company hopes users will be prompted to slow down, step outdoors, and reconnect with reading in a more deliberate, reflective setting.
As project lead Shusaku Kamiya put it, the goal was not just to repurpose the material but to create "time spent with books." It's a neat piece of brand storytelling — one that transforms an operational headache (massive chunk of inventory becoming waste) into a product identity built around sustainability and a love of reading.