In my town, phonebooks aren't accepted into recycling. The town expects it's residents to drive fifteen minutes (each way from my house) to the other side of town to deposit my used phone books in the parking lot of a nondescript phone company building. Not going to happen in today's busy world. In my informal poll of neighbors and friends, not one person actually drives their phone books to the designated drop spot. No one even knew about this spot.
After numerous phone calls and emails I was convinced that the 8 to 10 phone books I receive per year were never going to go away.
Until now.Yellow Pages Goes Green is a nonprofit group that is helping local governments establish ordinances that will not allow yellow and white page phone directories to be delivered to residents who do not want them. No more hearing that ominous thud on the driveway. We are now gaining the power to say what is and what is not to be left in our driveways and on our doorsteps.
The YellowPagesGoesGreen.org site includes an area to sign-up to be removed from phone book distribution lists. Because, come on, don't you just Google information anyways?
The YPGG site also shares some startling statistics about phone books. Did you now that 500 million phone books were printed int he US last year? 19 MILLION trees had to be harvested to create those phone books! 268,000 cubic feet of landfill space will be used when those same phonebooks are trashed.!
Why are we paying for this landfill space? Why are we paying to trash our air quality? Why are we paying for something that we didn't ask for?
Please take a minute to opt out of unsolicited phone book deliveries. You will never have to chase down a sketchy van in your jammies again. (true story)
Why are we paying for this landfill space? Why are we paying to trash our air quality? Why are we paying for something that we didn't ask for?
Please take a minute to opt out of unsolicited phone book deliveries. You will never have to chase down a sketchy van in your jammies again. (true story)
6 comments:
There's one of those damn things in my driveway right now. Waterlogged from the rain. :)
Fortunately, we can just dump into our recycle bin. But, seriously. In this day of internets and 411, does anyone even USE the phone book anymore? How much of it is even still accurate by the time it thumps onto your driveway? OK, maybe that's an issue for bigger cities, like ours, but I'll betcha that book in our driveway is posting ads for businesses that have since shut down.
Does anyone use the books? 85% of adults at least once a year resulting in some 14 billion look-ups.
and why doesn't your town recycle the books?? Your taxes go towards recycling of newspapers (even if you don't get them), cardboard (even if it's not from something your bought), plastic bottles (even if you don't drink from them), so why exclude print phone books????
Yet another "feel good" government solution looking for a problem.....
Anonymous~ Personally, I like to "feel good". I try to feel good about my choices every day.
Also, this group is not a government organization. It is a nonprofit group that is working towards a solution.
PS To my loyal readers. I don't generally check where the people who anonymously post come from. I welcome all comments.
This one smelled a little fishy.
It looks like the last commenter is a little troll. Hello to my new friend from Yellow Book!
The number of trees used to make phone books is shocking!
Thanks for this great info! I have already signed up.
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