You've likely seen it before, you come home to find a bag of useless phonebooks on your porch. I realized recently that I haven't used a phonebook or yellowpages in years - I take them straight to recycling. They are dinosaurs.
This got me thinking - shouldn't I be able to opt-out of automatic delivery? Wouldn't there be a significant impact if everyone stopped receiving phonebooks and yellow pages? Apparently the major players pumped out 540 million directories this year.
This is insane and wasteful and I want people to know they can opt-out. Below are the numbers to call for the major distributors of phone books and yellow pages (none have online forms as far as I know). Simply call the numbers and tell them you want to opt-out of delivery - it takes a few minutes. I called all the ones below myself.
AT&T/YellowPages (formerly SBC and Bell South):
1.800.792.2665
Verizon (Idearc):
1.888.266.5965 Out of Service
Dex:
1.877.243.8339
Yellow Book:
1.800.373.3280 or 1.800.373.2324
The major players use a tactic called "saturation distribution" that means that you may get books even if you don't have a land line.
PaperlessPetition.org is one of the only resources I found who is working on this issue. From their site:
...expedite an end to this needless environmental waste, educate consumers on free and easy alternatives, and shed light on the growing inaccuracy of readership statistics that drive advertisers to still invest in this antiquated medium.
If you're interested, you can get a badge here.
You can also sign up to not receive any phone books here:
http://www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org/stop-yellow...
Here are some shocking and disgusting info on what these directories waste every year:
To produce 500 million books:
- 19 million trees need to be harvested
- 1.6 billion pounds of paper are wasted
- 7.2 million barrels of oil are misspent in their processing (not including the wasted gas used for their delivery to your doorstep)
- 268,000 cubic yards of landfill are taken up
- 3.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity are squandered
Got this from a great site who is helping to end this terrible practice:
http://www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org/about.html
Link: http://www.commoncraft.com/how-stop-receiving-phone-books-and-yellow-p
Solution Type: Habit
Media
Wolf says :
Here's an email I sent to both directory companies:
Hello Verizon Yellow Pages. I appreciate your online service but would like you to permanently remove my household from receiving the paper versions of your directory. I am a staunch environmentalist and your books use an absurd amount of paper, thereby cutting down our earth's trees. At this point in modern history, there is no reason to be doing this. Please remove my address from your list, so I will no longer receive your paper directory.
Also, you should provide an opt-in service to people who may only want to use your online version. Environmentalism is the issue of our time and you should lead in this regard, rather than contribute massively to the problem. I see that the directories aren't made from recycled paper or recycled once obsolete. Therefore, you all must be killing millions of trees a year to accomplish your tasks. Please stop this. The world begs you.
Thank you.
Posted 06/20/08 at 01:23 PM