Comments on: Go “extinct” yourself… please!

By: Doreen

Doreen — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 04:44:09 +0000

Stephanie – I did too! But I just had yet ANOTHER phone book land at my curb! AUGH! Like I said, we at least should sign-up to be a part of the “movement” that tells the publishers we want a choice of OPTING OUT !

By: Stephanie

Stephanie — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 15:31:16 +0000

Thanks for the tip. I'm going to sign up right now! Stephanie Elie (aka bizziemommy.com) Stephanies last blog post..i kaboodle, do you?

By: Doreen

Doreen — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 05:47:36 +0000

Rick – I agree…we just have to consider it a “movement” and our “voice” saying ENOUGH!

Friar – you’re right – there are likely places in this country that DO need their phone books (and your 80 page phone book made me grin! I like that you can opt out locally too and it’s easy to recycle. It’s the billions upon billions of HUGE books that hit the big metropolitan and suburban areas like us..soooo wasteful.

Lee – thanks so much for sharing the comment from “Kenc”. Presuming that all of his information is accurate, let’s say that all phone books are made of recycled paper, woodchips and lumber waste. I can accept that. What I can’t accept is what happens after billions and billions of phone books are produced, unwanted and then thrown in the trash! Don’t you agree? I don’t think it justifies the overabundance of phone books by saying that by producing them it keeps other waste from the landfills. I’m just an advocate of dramatically reducing the amount of needless, NEEDLESS phone books from the beginning… your thoughts?

By: Lee

Lee — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:34:33 +0000

I wrote a blog post on this after I saw yours and I got this comment on my blog… Thought I’d share!

Kenc wrote:
Sorry to let you know your facts are NOT correct.

While the popular myth is that this industry is responsible for the neutering of forests, 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.

And that’s just the paper side of the business….

Lees last blog post..I Love Reusable Products!

By: The Happy Friar

The Happy Friar — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:54:34 +0000

gotta say, unless you’re in a metro area (city, big suberb, etc) the online way is useless. Looking up a number for a local business in my area is a 40 minute affair. Half the time I can’t find ANY number for the business (or person), or it’s REALLY out of date.

but the phone book for my town is ~80 pages (5 pages for my town), includes all surrounding towns & is ~4x6x0.25″ big. We get a “tricounty” phone book which includes lots more towns but is still ~1/2″ thick, at most. HOWEVER… you CAN call the local phone company & say you don’t want the local book. They don’t mind. Very easy to recycle around here too.

but even if you don’t want a phonebook, try to get the local utility/emergency #’s from an old one (ie rip it out). Once you have those you’re set. Many websites don’t have those numbers as they want you to call a 1-800 # to redirect your call.

By: Rick Zwetsch

Rick Zwetsch — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:58:29 +0000

What the folks over at YellowPagesGoesGreen are doing is excellent and if you’re tired of receiving white and yellow phone books that you don’t need and you didn’t ask for – sign up ASAP! More than likely that will not get you off the list as soon as you’d like. At least not yet!

Best bet is to call each of the directory publishers direct. I wrote a post about it here:

http://yousnoozeyoulose.com/2008/08/11/yellow-pages-love-em-or-hate-em/

Rick Zwetschs last blog post..Quick Pickz: 9/4/08

By: Doreen

Doreen — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 19:43:38 +0000

Robert – at least your apartment community is willing to take responsibility for it. The bad part is – how many people actually called and asked the question you asked? – probably very few. I’m sure many took them and just tossed them. Opting out is the best option, if it would just become a widespread choice!

By: Robert Rowe

Robert Rowe — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:07:43 +0000

The apartment community I live in currently just delivered phonebooks to ever apartment. Thankfully, we only have 1, Yellow/White combined phone book. I haven’t used a phone book in years though, so I called the office and asked if they’d recycle them if I chose not to take it, and they said, “Yes! Any that aren’t wanted, or are left by the mailboxes will be picked up and recycled at the end of the week.”
Better, would be allowing us to opt-out from the start (less creation of useless books in the first place), but it’s a start, I guess.