Be Green – Say No to Yellow Pages
Year in, year out, like clockwork, over 500 million Yellow (and White) Pages are delivered to homes and offices, often up to six times a year. That’s a lot of dead trees (around 19 million) and wasted paper (1.6 billion pounds).
Does anyone use the Yellow Pages?
If gathering dust is all these books are doing in your house or office, then it’s time to turn the page on the directory delivery.
One college student in Missouri has done just that. His site, Yellow Pages Goes Green, offers help. Just sign up at Yellow Pages Goes Green and put in a request to stop delivery of the Yellow (and even White) Pages to your home and/or office and the local distributor will receive an electronic feed message to stop future deliveries. Be aware, though, you might still receive one more delivery before the books finally stop arriving.
But Yellow Pages Goes Green is more than just a place to sign up to stop delivery. It’s running a grassroots campaign that aims to encourage the White/Yellow Pages industry to proactively stop the delivery of books. And it is looking at ways to help municipalities and local governments around the country establish ordinances to mandate Yellow Pages and White Pages only be delivered to home and offices that ask for them.
If you’re a dedicated Yellow Pages user, just remember that when it comes time to ditch the old books, make sure they end up at a recycling center. Sites such as Earth911.com and YellowPages.com offer information on how to ensure your old phone books get recycled.
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8 Comments
January 21st, 2009 at 7:46 am
Your information about the number of trees destroyed is incorrect. The reality is the Yellow Pages industry doesn’t knock down any trees for its paper!!! Let me repeat that ““ they don’t need to cut any trees for their paper supply. Currently, on average, most publishers are using about 40% recycled material (from the newspapers and magazines you are recycling curbside), and the other 60% comes from wood chips and waste products of the lumber industry. If you take a round tree and make square or rectangular lumber from it, you get plenty of chips and other waste. Those by-products make up the other 60% of the raw material needed. Note that these waste products created in lumber milling would normally end up in landfills. Not only that, as wood chips decompose, they emit methane, a greenhouse gas closely associated with global warming.
For more information go here: http://www.yptalk.com/production.cfm
January 21st, 2009 at 12:39 pm
WIth so many online places to go now, like WhitePages.com, (http://www.WhitePages.com) there is no need for everyone to receive the phone books. Many areas in the US are starting to have more obvious ways to opt-out, and even some areas are implementing and opt-in program.
January 21st, 2009 at 2:43 pm
Yes, publishers are establishing ways to opt-out of books, and I would certainly agree that residential white pages are obsolete. But you may not know that in many areas the Telco is required by FCC mandate to publish that book. Even those in the industry would like to see the residential white pages requirements be abolished.
Yellow pages, well, we could debate that as there is no shortage of research showing that 85% of adults use them at least once a year.
January 21st, 2009 at 6:49 pm
The phonebook is used at least once a week in my house. I can’t count how many times i’ve looked for a business online and found listings for defunct businesses at the top of the search results. Totally useless. The web isn’t updated. The phonebook is extremely accurate when it’s issued.
January 21st, 2009 at 7:34 pm
@JeffConn – Have you tried WhitePages.com? It’s updated regularly, it’s easy to use, and it’s free. So far, it’s come up with everything I’ve searched for.
http://www.WhitePages.com
January 22nd, 2009 at 9:29 am
Some interesting points here. I was not aware that the Yellow Pages are made of recycled and waste materials, and while that is great, I think it bears mentioning that manufacturing anything, even from recycled materials, has a negative impact on the environment. So while recycled is better than virgin wood, isn’t not producing them at all the best choice?
Also, the methane produced from wood chips decomposing is produced by the decomposition of paper as well. Seems as though we are only postponing the event, not eliminating it.
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:02 am
The Yellow Pages industry provides an advertising source for millions of small businesses, many of whom use it as their sole advertising/marketing effort. As a result nearly $1 trillion in commerce is generated from their ads. With nearly 14 billion references from the 85% of adults who use the books at least once a year — that’s a lot business, jobs, and positive impacts on an economy that is already at the edge of depression. The industry alone has approximately 50k people employed in it.
Just living hasd impacts on the environment. The balance is obviously what can be done to minimize the impact, and I would strongly agree that the industry has done a dreadful job of telling consumers what it is doing to be more eco-friendly. the paper is just one side of it. Soy based inks, using the residual byproducts from that paper mill to fuel it, and many others are just some examples.
January 22nd, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Who uses the yellow page book now a day? I mean we have access to this yellow book on line and its paperless!
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