Hi everyone!  I wrap my books to mail in Maps.  My husband drove a truck years ago and had a really large book of maps.  I started to throw it away, but since I am a recycler, I decided to keep it.  Whenever anyone orders a book from me, I find the page of the state they live in and find the city.  I put a red circle around it and make sure it shows.  (That last part is just something I do for fun).  It is interesting to look at plus I recycled the paper map.

What a great idea! It makes me want to request a book from you just to see how you do it. Thanks for sharing a fun idea.

I received a book in great condition the other day in a Kraft Macaroni and Cheese box. I thought that was easy!

I'm surprised when I receive a book which was just placed in a mailing envelope, without some other protection. Especially when that protection---i.e., plastic wrapper---is free. I'm a big believer in reuse and recycle. You know those rolls of bags supermarkets make available in the produce area into which you can place produce? I don't always use them, but when I do, I save them after I get home after placing the produce in my fridge. These bags are just right for mass market paperbacks or larger softcover books. For hardbacks, I use the plastic outer wrapping on the bread I buy. It's stronger than the produce bags.

Often the book fits so nicely in the plastic bag, you don't even have to tape it. I just fold the bag around the book and insert it into the mailing envelope. This way the person who receives it can reuse it.

Yea Thomas.   I'm with you.  Use light weight plastic to cover most books which no longer go into the padded bags and follow that with paper envelopes or heavier plastic I can cut to size.  I use the colored padded bags for wrapping gifts but otherwise I'm not sure what to do with padded bags.

I've been a small business owner for a long time selling online and I have found a lot of neat ways over the years to recycle shipping materials.
 

• A lot of the time printing on the outside of polymailers (bubble mailers, or the plain plastic kind Amazon or other places use) will come off with 70% rubbing alcohol, so if you have that on hand you can just clean them off when you get them and store them for later re-use. 
• Construction paper works very well and I have loads leftover from when my kids were little with a million single small squiggles doodled on the inside.
• I'm a bookbinder in my day job so I am regularly shipping expensive hand-crafted hardcase books and need them to arrive without anydamage to the corners, so I unfold an amazon box and refold it into a custom size box just the same size as the book around it but inside out so it's nice and snug, basically like a temporary slipcase. It keeps the corners safe during shipping. Then I wrap the outside same as any book. It only adds about an ounce to the weight.
• Many boxes come with high quality brown kraft paper crumpled inside as filler. It can be flattened. I have a garment rack with clothespins I store paper on so it isn't taking up tons of space, but i have TONS of paper. Rolling it around a couple paper towel rolls taped end to end would work well to store too.

As for what to do otherwise with padded envelopes if you can't reuse them because they're too damaged or don't fit the books you're sending, etc. I know you can't recycle in normal bins because they're a mixed material. I use a company called Ridwell that is available in some areas that picks up additional types of recycleables - they take stuff like bubble mailers/padded envelopes (along with a lot of other things.)