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No more Yellow Pages

By Kastle Waserman

Posted Mon Dec 22, 2008 10:36am PST

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Recently, I came home and found a Yellow Pages book wrapped in a plastic bag on my doorstop. I thought to myself, with the Internet and mobile searches, who uses the Yellow Pages anymore? I kicked it inside and added it directly to my recycling pile.

The next morning I found my neighbors must have had the same thought, except instead of putting it in their recycling piles, they put the books directly in the trash to end up in the landfills. Grrrr!

This made me realize what a gigantic waste of paper and plastic those books are. They aren't asked for and aren't used, not once. We must stop this madness.

Thankfully, I came across a site that helps you opt-out. Yellow Pages Goes Green was founded in April 2008 by a college student who was renting a house in Liberty, Missouri, and was sick of being bombarded by phone books.

Similar to the concept of stopping junk mail, the site lets you sign up and request no more local Yellow/White Pages delivery to your home or business. An electronic feed notifies the Yellow/White Pages distributor in that area to cease and desist. (Note: It may take up to one full delivery cycle before the books stop.)

According to a representative from the site, "Some of the publishers accept the request, some have asked for the file to be reformatted, and some say they do not have to listen to the individuals." For those publishers who are uncooperative, they are "adding some teeth" to the request by working with government agencies toward making such distribution actually illegal.

Don't let the site's name mislead you, Yellow Pages Goes Green is not in any way associated with the makers of the Yellow Pages (and it should be noted that the Yellow Pages website does offer a ZIP code search to find a place to recycle the books).

Yellow Pages Goes Green is a grassroots campaign effort to tell the Yellow and White Pages producers that their products are wasteful and people resent having the books forced upon them to deal with disposal. This is the one time when free is not good.

About 500 million Yellow and White Pages phone books are produced each year, costing 19 million trees and wasting 1.6 billion pounds of paper, according to Yellow Pages Goes Green.

The site is currently close to having 100,000 sign-ups. Save a tree, or rather a forest, by adding your name to the list.

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Posted by tgrssn Tue Dec 23, 2008 10:45pm PST
I sell yellow pages advertising for a living, and while I agree with you partially that they are a huge waste of paper and that the majority of people who receive them no long use them that's not the point. You are way off mark for a number of reasons and I'll explain why. 1.) You're not going to get any yellow page company to agree not to put their books on your door. They aren't distributed through a mailing list which you can opt out of. They are distributed by day laborers in unmarked trucks, in bulk, door to door with almost no oversight at all. 2.) Those yellow page books are paid for by the advertisers within them. A quarter page ad in my large directory (1.4 million copy directory) costs about 2400 dollars a year. If this ad is placed under the heading of "air conditioning contractors" they can expect to get an average of 15 leads per month from that ad.
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Posted by LeticiaQ Wed Dec 24, 2008 1:44pm PST
these are some great ideas the lunch bag for a bike is a really cool gift for my father.
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Posted by Tim G Sat Jan 3, 2009 6:54am PST
I can appreciate that tgrssn would like to keep his job, however a blind person can even see what a waste the yellow pages are for people 'who do not want it'. I work at a business in a rural area and now we have three different yellow pages in our own area let alone the fringe areas. I have had over TEN (yes - TEN) yellow page books delivered to the business this year alone. I am not the biggest 'GREEN' advocate, but once again - even a blind person can see the humongous was these books bring about; waste in energy to create them, waste in trees and recycled paper to create them, waste in landfills to get rid of them, etc. What it will take is for people to quit using them and if you look up a business ONLINE, please make sure that you tell them where you found their number... make sure they realize that the yellow pages are not the answer... especially for 2400 dollars a year they could save. Sorry tgrssn, but methinks you may be looking for new work in the not so far distant future.
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Posted by rec_rajmohan Fri Jan 30, 2009 12:21am PST
We seem to be ok doing billions of google searches a day, yet have issues with Yellow Pages, which are one of the most extensively used books in the world to search. “Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research. Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research. ” http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5489134.ece Raj Mohan Calcutta Yellow Pages http://www.cyp.in
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Posted by GilB Sun Feb 1, 2009 6:08am PST
The distributors of the yellow pages are worse than Wally World when it comes to what they pay to have these books delivered. My daughter thought it was a good idea to make a little extra cash one summer, but it was a terrible deal and ended up paying about $.85 an hour! I was very upset about it. I don't see how they can get away with ripping of children with those kind of wages. She was also responsible for supplying gas for her vehicle. I would love to see those sleazy crooks go out of business!
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Posted by maxinej Sun Feb 1, 2009 8:14am PST
There are many, many people in the United States who do not have computers,and/or access to the Internet. Therefore to cancel telephone books made of paper will remove a source of information needed by everyone. Telephone service in rural areas is often much more limited than urban areas. Telephone books are needed. Urban point of view does not cover all of the country. hortense
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Posted by loves good food Mon Aug 3, 2009 11:22am PDT
I have tried to find different things online in the yellow pages and find that not all businesses are listed online. I get a better result using the paper yellow pages. Also one year I helped deliver the paper yellow pages to houses. I was paid quite well. I don't know what the girl did wrong that only figured out to $.85 an hour. Did you let the car run the whole time? I took my coaster wagon and cardboard boxes that fit in the wagon. Then the night before I would go out, I put the plastic bags on books and had them in the boxes. I had approx. 5 boxes filled. Then I would pull the wagon up one side of the street for 2 blocks, cross the street and come back down the other side of the street, load the wagon up, drive up 2 more blocks and do the same thing again. It was kinda hard if going uphill with a full wagon, but was downhill coming back. I met many people and learned a lot of things from the residents. It was fun 3 days. And you can work at your own pace. BUT there was a time frame to have it done. That timeline wasn't hard to meet. I had to go pick up the first load of books, but they came to my house for the second load. And they came to my house to pickup the leftovers and paperwork when done.
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Posted by BillJ Mon Aug 17, 2009 1:22pm PDT
www.YellowPagesGoesGreen.org is a great site. I sent a note to verify they were real and they got back to me within minutes. They will contact the publishers with my request. Unfortunately they can't guarantee the publishers will abide my request. This is a start in the right direction.
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