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Monday, May 18, 2009

Green Death to Phone Books Part II

Posted by Sarah Mirk on Mon, May 18, 2009 at 2:31 PM

Phone books. I have seven. I hate them. I probably have at least a tree's worth of paper sitting on my front porch right now, piling up as a monument to the futility of personally trying to save the world by saving paper. I don't want them. And yet they appear incessantly. Remember this photo? Nothing stops the phone book delivery people.

2f68/1242680675-1237918627-phone_book-1.jpg

When I blogged about phone book waste a couple months ago, commenters pointed out that Oregon should mandate some sort of opt-in policy for phone book distribution. And that is exactly what SE Portland Representative Jules Kopel Bailey has done. He and Portland Rep Ben Cannon are the sponsors of HB 3477, which would make Oregon the first state in the country where it would be illegal to distribute phone books to people without their specific request. Phone book companies could still drop off a bunch of the obsolete tomes at public libraries and post offices, where people who need them could pick one up. In the meantime, look what we wouldn't be doing:

According to a DEQ study, in 2003 there were 6.45 million sets of
white/yellow pages published and distributed in Oregon, and there were
only 1.33 million households in the state at that time. Only about 20%
of phone books are recycled, the rest end up in landfills or are burned.

Glory glory Hallelujah. However, the bill hasn't gotten a hearing yet, so it doesn't seem likely it'll pass this session. Which means by the next possible time it could become law, we'll have cut down the trees to print at least 13 million more phone books in Oregon. I say we engage in a vigilante campaign, impaling more phone books on fences around town as a warning to Qwest.

 

Comments (17) RSS

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1
Or make pretty phone book trees in planters that don't have enough plants!
Posted by ROM on May 18, 2009 at 2:51 PM · Report
2
I don't know why someone doesn't just deliver them back whence they came.
Posted by Suburban Porn King on May 18, 2009 at 3:02 PM · Report
3
Qwest isn't the problem. I actually pay them for phone service. It's the Verizon, Tel-net, faux yellow pages phone books that are just ad book fakes that are the big waste.
Posted by Green Peas on May 18, 2009 at 3:11 PM · Report
4
I was a proud member of the Mercury Rose Parade Tape Removal Team a couple of years ago, and I would gladly lend my labor to an effort to round up these unwanted phone books and deliver them to the offices of those responsible for their production.
Posted by Kentonite on May 18, 2009 at 3:14 PM · Report
5
Have a truck, Kentonite? I get over 300 books per year at my apartment complexes.
Posted by martin on May 18, 2009 at 3:22 PM · Report
6
Oh yeah, and I embarrassingly emailed Rep. Kopel-Bailey asking her to support this bill without realizing that she was the sponsor.
And then here's how to get crafty:
http://recycledcrafts.craftgossip.com/phon…
Posted by martin on May 18, 2009 at 3:29 PM · Report
7
If I were you Martin, I would be more embarrassed by thinking Jules is a woman.
Posted by Tonya on May 18, 2009 at 4:32 PM · Report
8
martin,
your campaign of self-embarrassment has just begun. Jules is a MAN. Read the article below (about id magazine). I hope you don't plan on starting a queer magazine now. I hear such confusion can make things "sticky."
Posted by Carl on May 18, 2009 at 4:33 PM · Report
9
Bring your phonebooks to my house. They help protect me from getting shanked on my way to the shower.
Posted by iwouldprefernotto on May 18, 2009 at 4:51 PM · Report
10
Tonya and Carl, you're right. I LOLed. My bad for assuming my district is represented by a woman.
Posted by martin on May 18, 2009 at 5:13 PM · Report
11
Hey. No worries. I live in that district, too. It definitely has a woman's touch about the place.
Posted by Carl on May 18, 2009 at 5:21 PM · Report
12
Think we could throw in the "O's" weekly edition of Food Day into this bill? Talk about a waste of trees!
Posted by overheardinpdx on May 18, 2009 at 6:26 PM · Report
13
AAARGGGHH, did someone say FOOD DAY?? Grrrrrrr.
Posted by iwouldprefernotto on May 18, 2009 at 7:27 PM · Report
14
Food day stopped coming to my house when gas hit $4, but it seems to have started back up, (although it is very spotty, I haven't gotten one in about a month.)

It is quite useful, sometimes I need to paint something, and I don't want to get paint on the floor.
Posted by Matthew D on May 19, 2009 at 12:56 AM · Report
15
All of these companies pretend to have an "opt out" program. I've tried them. Call and you'll get told you are going to be connected to that operator, then.... dial tone! That's fraud, pure and simple.

Make them pay a recycling fee in advance for every copy they distribute. Otherwise, fine the bejesus out of them.
Posted by Katie on May 19, 2009 at 7:35 PM · Report
16
Even if the bill passed you wouldn't see a single tree saved.

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.

For more information go here: http://www.yptalk.com/archive.cfm?ID=390&C…
Posted by kenc on May 26, 2009 at 6:25 PM · Report
17
Kenc is a YP hack. his claims are not true.
Posted by AlbertKaufman on February 4, 2011 at 10:29 AM · Report

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