Dear EarthTalk: I came home today to yet another set of phone books at my front door. I feel they are a great waste of paper, especially in this electronic age. How can I stop getting these books? Better yet: How can we get the phone companies to stop making them?
-- Bill Jones, via e-mail

Many of us have little or no use for phone books anymore. While such directories are helpful for that occasional look-up of a service provider or pizza place, consumers and businesses increasingly rely on the Internet to find goods and services. Directory publishers usually do make their listings available online nowadays, too, but the books are still money-makers for them as prints ads fetch top dollar even though their effectiveness is waning and much harder to track.

According to the nonprofit YellowPagesGoesGreen.org, more than 500 million phone directories—nearly two books for every American—are printed and distributed every year in the U.S., taking with them some 19 million trees. Upwards of 1.6 billion pounds of paper are generated to produce the books from these felled trees, while 7.2 million barrels of oil are churned through in creating them (not including the gasoline used for local deliveries). Producing the directories also uses up 3.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and generates 268,000 cubic yards of solid waste that ends up in landfills (not including the books themselves, many of which eventually end up in landfills in areas where recycling is not available or convenient).

Unfortunately, there is no centralized way for consumers to opt-out of receiving the big books like the National Do Not Call Registry for telemarketing. Most individual yellow and white page publishers have “no deliver” lists they can add you to, but they will not be held accountable if the books show up anyway. The YellowPagesGoesGreen.org website will find your local/regional directory pages publishers and ask them not to deliver on your behalf. The site warns, though, that there are no guarantees with this either.

For their part, directory publishers insist they have made great strides in recent years to operate in an environmentally responsible manner. The Yellow Pages Association (YPA) and the Association of Directory Publishers (ADP) have collaborated on formal guidelines calling for source reduction in the production of directories, environmentally sensitive manufacturing practices and enhanced recycling programs. About 90 percent of industry members have adopted the guidelines so far. Examples in practice include the use of water soluble inks and recycling-friendly glues, not to mention forsaking the use of virgin trees in their books (many books are made from recycled old phone books, mixed with scrap wood; see a previous column that discussed this: www.emagazine.com/view/?3651).

Because of widespread and increasing use of the Internet, many sources of information—from newspapers and magazines to newsletters and, yes, directories—are forsaking print for online placement. So it is really just a matter of time before phone directories follow that lead. In the meantime, asking to be removed from the delivery list of your local directory publisher can only help to hasten that inevitability.

CONTACTS: YellowPagesGoesGreen.org, www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org; Yellow Pages Association (YPA), www.ypassociation.org; Association of Directory Publishers (ADP), www.adp.org.

5 Comments

1. 1. KJeroH 12:44 PM 12/31/08

   The creation of the mini Bells and now a host of local phone companies has led to all of them producing their own local directories along with the primary big book. While "many of us" have less use of the directories the truth of the matter is that MOST of us still need it, whether for the pizza shop or any of the myriad of government services. Clearly, those of us who are reading Scientific American online make extensive use of the internet, most people still do not use or have that kind of access. The frustrating part is that I get at least four directories every year. (Oh and sometimes a company may abandon a website leaving outdated information while the local directory is often more up to date.)

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2. 2. one.energy 12:27 PM 1/1/09

   But do they really need to post signs about how many they delivered?
   

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3. 3. AJ2009 02:45 PM 1/28/09

   @gwarmingishype The Google trick works pretty well, but there are definitely some great online resources too, like WhitePages.com
   
   http://www.WhitePages.com

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4. 4. coadyvision 03:50 PM 9/19/11

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5. 5. thiagodaluz7 09:57 AM 3/26/13

   I probably wouldn't have found our local <a href="http://www.elcajonfamilydental.com">El Cajon family dental</a> without the hard directory. The tiny place didn't show up on any online maps. It's nice that they're still accurate, but I think this one thing that the sooner it moves to digital/online, the better.

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