At least once a year I get a pile of yellow pages on my front stoop. I always get at least two—maybe because there are two people in my house, although why they don’t assume we can share is beyond me. But besides making great doorstops I don’t get much use out of them. I have an iPhone with an easy-to-use yellow pages app.
Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org is an organization working to eliminate the unsolicited delivery of Yellow and White Pages books. Like me, they would rather save the trees cut down to create these books and not have to bother recycling them.
They compare their organization to the National No-Call Registry that stopped (or at least decreased) the number of unwanted telephone solicitations. Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org is trying to start a national movement to get the Yellow/white pages industry to stop delivering books unsolicited or to begin moving legislation to mandate the stoppage of these books. This is NOT meant to stop the books from being delivered to people who want them; it is to stop the unsolicited delivery to people who don’t.
Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org was founded by a college student in Liberty, Missouri.
According to the website, “Over 500 million of these directories are printed every year. That is nearly two books for every person in the country! These directories produce a staggering amount of waste, not only in terms of misused natural resources but also in filling of valuable landfill space.”
The site offers these statistics:
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
If you want to help the environment and stop unsolicited delivery of Yellow/White Pages books please visit www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org.
Do you still use paper Yellow or White pages? Do you think they should stop being delivered without a request?
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Er, not exactly. The site you mention is not able to help consumers stop delivery of directories (and they have no reliable source for the stats on their site). The only way to ensure that you don’t receive the books you don’t want is to go to the directory publisher (either by phone or on their sites) and put in a request to stop delivery. Most publishers will not accept third-party lists for privacy reasons and the owners of the site above know that.
In 2007, consumers referenced the Yellow Pages over 13.4 billion times, so there are still plenty of people who use them. And the ROI for advertisers remains high (and provable). Directory publishers don’t want to distribute to anyone who doesn’t wish to receive their books, so let them know if you want to stop delivery.
Full disclosure, I work for the Yellow Pages Association and for the facts on the directories, go to http://www.ypassociation.org.