Opt out of Phone Books

It’s that time of the year again.  At the beginning of each year we start getting a ton of paper left at our front door in the form of phone books.  It drives me nuts.  I can’t remember the last time I used a phone book to look up a number or a business.  In this internet age if I need to find information I turn to my computer and a search engine.  To my mind the yellow and white pages, at least the print form, are obsolete.

The image below shows the pile of phone books which I carried to our recycle bin this morning.  Not one of these were ever opened, nor were any of them ever requested.  They were just dumped on my doorstep.

This year I resolved to do something about it.  My first instinct was to go to the source of the problem at yellowpages.com  Well, that proved a bit fruitless.  Ten to fifteen minutes of searching on their site proved that if they had an opt out option available, they didn’t want anyone to find it.

After some more searching on the internet I came across  a movement called Yellow Pages Goes Green.  Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org is an organization working to educate consumers and promote a movement to eliminate unsolicited delivery of Yellow and White Pages books.    You fill out a simple form on their site and they will contact the publishers on your behalf and inform them that you have chosen to “opt out” of delivery of the phone books.  After filling out the form you will receive an e-mail and there is a link in the e-mail which you must click on to confirm your sign up.   The service is free to you.

Looking at the pile of books that I had heading out to the recycle bin, I realized that not all of them were the Yellow Pages.  A bit more research and I found another website, Yellow Pages Opt Out.  By entering my zip code at this site I was able to get a list of publishers that distributed in my local area.  This included my local Chamber of Commerce, Yellow Book, AT & T and The Complete Phone Book.  The list also included phone numbers and e-mail addresses to contact in order to opt out.

Another large publisher of phone books is Dex.  They do not distribute in my area, but you can get opr out information by entering your zip code at Select Your Dex.

Some interesting statistics from Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org

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.

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

The cost associated with the delivery and disposal of these books is exorbitant. Unfortunately, these unsolicited costs fall heavily on consumers. Why are we paying for something that was delivered to our homes and offices that we did not ask for?

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4. Hollow Form
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