What a waste
Telephone books add tons of waste to landfills (660,000 tons per year according to the Product Stewardship Institute), and they are not easily recycled.
If you’re reading this, you probably don’t flip the pages of a phone book to find a company’s contact information. You search online. Do you wonder, like me, what the business case is for printing millions of phone books that are never used? They can’t be cheap to print and deliver, and if they’re not opened, what’s the advertising benefit?
image by flickr user brutalSoCal
Telephone books add tons of waste to landfills (660,000 tons per year according to the Product Stewardship Institute), and they are not easily recycled. Even in places where it’s possible to recycle an unused phone book, the best solution is to not print the phone book in the first place. The EPA says that not publishing a phone book reduces greenhouse gases by about three times as much as recycling.
Many people still need and want printed phone books[1], but for those of us who don’t, we should be able to opt out of receiving them. That’s the thrust of a bill in Salem—Senate Bill 525—which would move Oregon to an opt-in system for phonebooks. You would choose whether you want the phone book or not.
If you want to reduce clutter, protect the environment, and save your local government money, sign this petition to demonstrate that there’s popular support for this bill.
And I’d like to give a big shout-out to neighborhood activist Albert Kaufman, who is leading this effort and demonstrating how involved citizens can make a difference.
[1] According to the National Telecommunications & Information Administration, over 30% of households and 35% of persons do not use the Internet at home, and 30% of all persons do not use the Internet anywhere.