Do you hate getting actual phone books every year?
I sure do! In fact, when I see a heavy yellow pages or white pages sitting below my mail box or at my door, it makes me mad.
I never ordered those books, and now, with online search so easy, I definitely don’t use them.
⇒For one thing, their type is just too tiny for me to read.
⇒For another, the listings in the printed books may be out of date.
⇒Plus, a lot of recycling programs don’t accept phone books because the pages are glued together.
Printed phone books may still be useful for folks who don’t have ready access to the Internet.
But for the rest of us they’re a real waste.
That’s why I was happy to learn about YellowPagesGoesGreen.org. They’re a company that makes it easy to opt out of getting the phone books. Here’s how:
How to Cancel Your Phone Book
√ Register for free. You’ll have to provide your name and address so they can send especially the address to the phone book companies.
√ Once you provide your address, you’ll see images of the phone books that are usually delivered to your home.
√ Click on those you want to opt out of for delivery.
That’s all there is to it!
If you’re still on the fence about whether you should cancel your phone book, consider these astounding facts, compiled by the Product Stewardship Institute:
- Telephone book companies use an estimated 4.68 million trees worth of wood fiber each year. That’s the equivalent of 14 football fields’ worth of forest – every single year!
- In 2009, the last year the EPA has data on phone book recycling, only 37% of all phone books were recycled.
- In 2009, 410,000 tons of directories went to landfills or incinerators, at a cost of about $60 million to local governments – and you, the taxpayer – nationwide.
By the way, over 50 percent of the electricity used by Yellow Pages Goes Green comes from solar. They’re also a Green Power Partner with the U.S. EPA.
