Yellow Book Saves The Earth By Distributing Thousands Of Phone Books With Smaller Print
I don't use phone books, but I get three different ones delivered to my house every year anyway. Hardly anyone I communicate with even has a landline, let alone a white pages listing, but that doesn't matter. They still deliver them. Straight into a snowbank.
Cliff received his phone book earlier this week, and noticed something interesting. His Yellow Book has been greenwashed.
I received our 2009 Yellowbook phone book today and immediately noticed something was off. The text inside is eye-strainingly tiny, and the inside cover has a nice eco explaination. You know what's more eco friendly? Maybe some way to opt-out of getting these in the first place.... I don't have a landline and I haven't used a phone book since 1998.
It's nice that they can reduce the amount of paper required to print these doorstops, but it would be much better to just not receive any at all.
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I don't even have a landline anymore, yet I get both a Yellow Book and a regular fatty Verizon phone book.
Their delivery cycle has an uncanny ability to predict heavy rain or snow.
Both go straight into the recycle bucket: They're just jumbo junk mail.
wait...these things are free?
time to have a talk with the guy at the corner bodega
I actually try to use them for things. Here are some examples:
Kindle for fire
Art
Weights for when I am glueing something
Stands - I have a built in display shelf right next to the ceiling in my house. All my displays sit too low so I use phone books to prop them up and you are able to see them
Anyone else have any good uses?
I need phone books out here in Podunk-Land. All the good businesses around here haven't moved to the intarwebs.
I heard about how in Boston, years ago, people hired to distribute phone books "delivered" them still baled up into public trash cans. Wasteful whichever way it goes.
You could keep them by the doorstep so you can beat those Jehovah's witnesses to death for knocking on your door at 8am on a saturday.
Phone books are still useful for the 28% of the US population who do not have Internets.
@henrygates: or when you're on vacation in an area you don't know and you don't want to eat at the hotel restaurant.
@henrygates: That's true, but why is it SO HARD to opt out of receiving them automatically?
(I know, I know - because the advertising revenue would plummet steeply if those companies admitted they were printing and distributing half as many)
@henrygates: That's still a huge majority that doesn't need them. It wouldn't be that hard to have a system for people to opt-in to receive them.
And you can always call the free numbers like 1-800-GOOG-411 to get a business number.
They tried that here about ten years ago, but the geriatric population here in Arizona rose up and complained that they couldn't read them.
This is great, cause the only people I know who use phone books are senior citizens, and they're well-known for their superb eye-sight.
LOL! Same as all these companies saying "we are helping the Earth and being green by not mailing you a bill, you print it online". Yes, they get to save on ink, paper, mailing costs, labor...and, oh yes, it is saving trees, too.
It really means "we are shifting the costs to you. You print out the bill on YOUR paper, use YOUR ink, etc..".
It is far cheaper to print and ship tiny yellow books than readable ones.
I would like to believe they are doing it to be green but I know better.
Last year when I saw the phonebook van driving up the street and throwing phone books out the window at all the houses, I called the cops on them for littering make model and licenseplate. It was kind of funny because well the cops drove up my street about 10 min after my call in his general direction. Don't know if they wound up pulling him over or not.
@Apple Brown Betty White: Your question answers itself. Phone books are difficult to opt out of because they are unnecessary for most people.
@sponica: And not everyone has a laptop to replace them in that situation, either.
I keep a local phone book in my car; it's come in handy often on the road as I can pick it up and flip to the page I need in less time than it would take me to get my laptop out of the bag and find a wireless connection.
It is nice to have a phonebook in your hotel room when you are in a new city - otherwise they have been more or less useless since about1992
Correct me if i'm wrong, but I have read in the past that some states/municipalities require phone book delivery. That it dates back to many years ago but hasn't been changed.
So now the only people who need phone books - old people who don't use the internet - can't use them anymore because they can't read the tiny print. Brilliant.
You know that these are a federally required item, right? They MUST be distributed due to legislation.
I just realized, my 2008/2009 Yellow Pages still has its plastic wrap on it.
As such, I propose that they instead deliver 32MB USB drives with the entire phone book in digital form on it.
@AnxiousDemographic: Same here. I've never had a landline, just cell phones. I get one of these every few months or so. Straight to the recycle bin
@zigziggityzoo: I'd take that. Plus it beats seeing old phonebooks piled up on your neighbors' driveways who never bring them in.
@Valerie Flame: Hey, I'm 24 and still use a phonebook. Of course, my eyesight isn't very good either...
@AnxiousDemographic: 3 weeks ago i got SIX phone books, i sh*t you not. i got one yellowbook & verizon on the side door, one of each on the front door, and my neighbor managed to nudge her 2 over onto my property. (her front door is like 6 ft from my house).
@jozhua: You could use one for doing paper mache. But I have a life time supply of those free newspapers that get dumped in my mail box to use.
I proved there is no need for a phone book ever, even if the internet is down. We needed the number for the power company after an outage. I looked it up online using my cell phone. I could have called 411 in that circumstance.
I wish cities would start forcing phone book companies to send a door tag ahead of time allowing people to opt in to getting a phone book. If you have the door tag on your door on the delivery date you get a book, everyone who does not doesn't.
One of the local stores has a dumpster out front for old phone book recycling. When books get delivered it will be over flowing with the new edition being tossed. What a waste.
Yellow Book is a fake yellow pages, as it is all paid content, as opposed to the real yellow pages from the phone company which has every business listing plus paid ads.
how on earth is mandatory paper distribution "green"? even a little? :P
dont get me wrong, we kill trees to make paper, and plant trees so we have trees to kill. we arent deforesting the world or anything, but its a ridiculous amount of energy wasted.
@pupu: it seems like that long ago doesnt it? but its not... you had never heard of the internet until 1995, and probably didnt have it at home AND work until 1997 or so. at the earliest!
We move to new towns a lot and the yellow pages are always useful in getting to know what's out there. Some places (especially small businesses) don't show up on an internet search and can be easily overlooked.
There's a bill floating around in the Oregon legislature that would make it illegal to distribute phone books except when people request them. I'm sure it will pass; I think the state Congress' love of appearing green will outweigh any pressure from the phone book lobby, if there is such a thing.
I too received several phone books even though I don't own a land line. I took them back to the lobby of the local phone company (Windstream) and dumped them in their lobby and left. I'll let them deal with what to do with 3 phone books.
Great idea...except that the only people who still use phonebooks are the same people who order large print books. Doh!
@zigziggityzoo: I've never heard of this. Can you give a little more information regarding legislation requiring phonebooks? Maybe even a link?
@TheDude06: I had a 14.4 modem in 1995 thank you very much! Thankfully I went off to college after that and have had broadband speeds ever since.
In all honesty though, the phone book became useless to me around 2000. Phonebooks need to be distributed by request only, such a waste of paper.
I keep ONE up-to-date phone book in the house. I found it came in really handy when our power was out for a few days. I could call a bunch of pizza places and see if their power was still out and if they were delivering. Looked up the power company to call them a couple of times to see if there was an update. Couldn't look anything up online until the power came back on.
I find it helpful if I want to look at various menus that takeout places have printed in there. The blue pages and city numbers come in handy sometimes. The school info line is in there, number to call for garbage pickup, etc. If my husband is doing a lot of work on the computer or my kid is in the middle of a school project on the computer I just pick up the phone book.
Plus, I find sometimes the online yellow pages really stink. Does anyone know which online yellow pages are the best? The ones I've looked at are sometimes missing major area businesses and companies, are misfiled in wrong categories, or riddled with typos.
My daughter says I am very close to becoming "the crazy anti-phone book woman." I have done everything I can think of to get them to quit leaving these multi-pound piles of garbage on my property. I tried opting out with the publishers. I have, upon seeing the delivery people, politely told them not to leave the books. I've begged my HOA to forbid the deliveries. I have sent e-mails to the businesses that advertise on the covers of the books, telling them I would make a point of not using their goods or services. I HATE that I have to haul 5 pounds of unsolicited trash-vertising to the recycling bin on a quarterly basis. I also hate that it's making me a lunatic.
@jozhua:
stick in vehicle where you are liable not to be around the internet. or uses pages for emergency toilet paper.
OK, I get that phone books are an environmental evil and that people should use the Internet instead — they're obsolete and should never be printed. I never touch phone books any more, myself, so I should probably sympathize with this view.
Unfortunately, I can't. And the reason I can't, is what actually makes the reduction of type size a bad thing rather than a benefit.
You see, I have an elderly mother. She can't use a computer, and never will. It's not for lack of trying; I set her up with one a long time ago ... it just sat for months there gathering dust. She just can't use it.
(I'm sure someone will say his 105 year old grandfather has no problem with a computer ... but too bad, my mother is not going to use one, no matter what anyone says. It's just not happening.)
At any rate, she needs her phone books, and she uses them. Smaller type, though, is precisely what she does not need at this point in her life.
I'm not sure why the people who publish phone books would not be aware of the fact that the elderly are now their primary readers. But apparently they've decided to inconvenience their last remaining market by giving them the opposite of what they want.
Brilliant. Put yourselves out of business, why don't you.
This reminds me of those people who buy a huge house that's way more than they need, and then consider themselves green because they get concerned about eco-friendly paint and energy saving climate control systems and renewable materials for their new flooring.
@jozhua: my new house came with two and i haven't unpacked everything yet. i have been using one as a trivet [since i haven't found my trivets yet] to keep hot pans off my countertop since i now have a glass topped stove and can't move a hot pan to an unused burner to get it off the heat
they don't seem to scorch at all!
@changed my name: eh, i have a cheap prepaid phone but i get the unlimited text plan so i can text google for phone numbers and directions.
my main use for the phone book is the blue pages. and most of the time an old copy will do for that because public and government services don't change their phone numbers too often.
granted, 99% of the time i use the government web sites to find the number i need, and i almost never need to call a government number that isn't something as simple as 911... but i guess i feel better having it in the house just in case some day i really need the phone number to the DMV or social security
Odd, I don't have a landline now and the only time I did get them was when I had a landline for a time for my business, but once I switched it to voip I don't get them anymore.