Having a phone book land on my doorstep is like receiving 1,000 pieces of junk mail at the same time. A tremendous waste of paper and resources. I try to be green. But I wonder how many trees were taken out of doing their job of producing oxygen for the Earth so I could get a book I put directly in the recycling bin. I often talk about recycling in my blogs and I honestly can’t tell if the city is happy or not about phone book day in my town. They collect the recycling and if they sell these books back to the paper mill I guess they may like phone book day. Even if you are a saver of the phone books, when you get a new one you throw out the old one. So either way, there is a phone book going in the front door and an old or new one going out the back. This happens at least three times a year in my neighborhood. That said, I personally get at least three sets a year from the various telcos. I freely admit I use the online versions of the Yellow Pages for various services. They have reviews as well as everything the books have plus maps. These sources are much better for information than the vestiges of the pre-Internet era, behemoth books. How green can it be to send half a tree to every household in my neighborhood? I don’t think they have any sort of list as I have watched the weighted-down van pull up to the corner then two guys jump out and drop off a bag of three of these books at every house on my block. I don’t see a list in their hands so I am assuming they just drop them all off.

As a side note, I am on a corner and often get a set of books dropped off at the front door and side door. I searched Google and found a news story with phone numbers to stop the distribution and a petition to do the same. But if the delivery people are not carrying a list of the phone company’s customers and hitting my front and side door, how would this stop them? Don’t get me wrong. I am sure many people use their phone books, especially those without Internet access, but are they really reading this blog? So can someone out there give me some suggestions to not only stop me from getting these phone books but a central location where anybody can opt out of this phone book “spamming” at my door?

Paper Less Petition