Then when people receive phone books even though they’ve explicitly opted out, I believe we should cite the company for littering and get them fined. Who else is allowed to come and dump a pile of unwelcome trash on your doorstep? The only way to get them to stop doing this is if it costs them cash. Let’s make it do just that.

With proper promotion, I’ll bet we could get 10,000 citations per phone book per distribution cycle, at about $100 per littering citation they might start listening to $1,000,000 in fines.

It’s good revenue for our municipal governments and good feedback to the companies that won’t listen when we tell them not to dump their junk at our businesses and residences.

Who wants to play?

What is your problem with giving those people who DO have the resources, knowledge, and desire to live without the Yellow Pages all the information they need in order to do so? Or do you believe residents have a requirement to receive your material regardless of whether they want it or not?

I can think of a lot of catalogs and direct-mail advertisers that “create opportunities for American business to flourish” as well. Although it would be a shameful waste of resources, maybe if we all sign you up for the ones WE think you’ll like, you’ll understand the perspective.

As for your perspective on environmentalism: All of your examples taken to extreme are, well, extreme. If each of us were to adjust such things moderately (ie. drive less, use public transportation more, keep our homes at reasonable temperatures, turn of unused lights, etc.) the overall and cumulative impact would be greatly beneficial.

Also, regardless of the tree-core base material of the book, what about the energy expended to produce the final product? Electricity for the grinders, presses, driers and such, then the fuel used to transport them not only from the mill to the printer, but then from there on to the consumer… Who then is likely to just chuck it into the recycle bin. Can you honestly not see the inefficiency in this?

I’d personally rather see the tree core mulched for agricultural use.

Reducing the reliance on another unnecessary and inefficient resource is just one step along the path most know to be right and necessary. The fact that you don’t see it that way serves to illustrate not only the sort of thinking that got us into this mess, but what sorts of challenges we face in getting out of it.

I felt compelled to take a moment to say thanks since the above commenter felt such hostility toward your extremely helpful information.

I agree with you 100%.

I have blogged about this issue before because it irritates the heck out of me that I get 30 pounds of unwanted phone books per year, and immediately I got several responses like the one you got above from people that I know did not read my blog. When haters all of a sudden found my little no-name blog that only family reads, well, it seemed kinda fishy to me, so we did some online research on the commenters. One of them ended up being associated with Yellow Pages (funny that he didn’t leave his web address that would have totally given it away without any research!) and some of the others had made copy and paste comments on other blogs against phone book deliveries. I think there is a few people that work for the phone book companies or are affiliated with them somehow that search out blog posts like this because they all say the same general thing in their comments, “they don’t cut down trees, billion dollar industry, not everyone has the internet, recycled ink, small business, blah, blah, blah.” When in actuality the bloggers’ main point usually is to MAKE THE DELIVERIES OPTIONAL and OPT IN rather than having to OPT OUT. There is big money in these old behemoths and they are going to claw at gathering advertisers with everything they’ve got. That said, I cannot think of anyone I know under the age of 35 that uses them.

I have already signed that petition and called the companies to stop deliveries. They didn’t stop the deliveries after my initial calls, but several complaints and talks with supervisors later, I think they finally have. I have even taken it to my environmental board for my city here to see what could be done. If you hear of any U.S. legislation passed to go to an opt-in program, please blog it because I would love to see our city follow!

Sorry for my rant; this subject is important to me. I just wanted to let you know that you will probably have some advocates for the companies write their little spiels about “how phone books really aren’t bad for the environment” but many of them have their own agendas. :-)

Not one tree is cut down to produce a Yellow Pages directory. The paper is made from what remains after the core of the tree is used for lumber - maybe the infrastructure of YOUR house. The paper is recyclable, heck even the ink used is recyclable. I’m tired of all of the bashing of an industry that creates opportunites for American business to flourish. Not everyone has a high speed internet connection to pull up a Google search for pizza and get 150,000 hits. If you’re so concerned about our environment, why don’t you stop driving, flying in airplanes, using fossil fuels to heat and cool your home and crawl into a mud hut somewhere to subsist. And don’t start any fires out there either. God forbid you would use precious wood from trees to do something as unnecessary as eating.