There's a dinosaur on your doorstep

It's a question you've probably asked a few times in recent years, and it's probably time the question was asked officially: Do you use a phonebook?

It's staggering to think how many are printed and distributed every year, just so the "owner" can pick it up off the doorstep, walk over to the recycling bin, dump it without so much as turning a page, and shake his or head over the waste of it all.

With fewer and fewer people keeping land-lines, and fewer people living without Internet access, surely the phone book should become an opt-in by-request item?

Comments

[scott]

I got one from a county near mine but I never make any calls there, let alone use one for my own area. Yet after a snow storm last week it got caught in my snowblower. Not cool phonebook deliverer!

[Yanoff]

Agreed on the opt-in. I can only think of using a phone book when I want to scan a list of businesses as opposed to when I know specifically what I am looking for. For example, if I needed a pest control business, I might open the phone book up, although frankly, I am more likely to ask my network of neighbors or Facebook "friends". How can we stop this waste? Do you suggest a letter-writing campaign?

[Emily]

i agree. How do we get that opt-in option to happen?

[stephanie]

I throw mine away (i'm 25) but my parents (in their 50's still use theirs 4 everything) so maybe it would be nice if we didnt get more then 1 a year. This year alone I got 3 at my house from different phone companies... maybe a list that we could get our names taken off of to help prevent the waste and the guilt of never using them.

[Pedar]

I use the yellow pages often. They work when the power is down. They are made from a renewable/recyclable resource. Once made no further resources need to be consumed to use them--like electricity from perto every time you do an internet search. Instead of an internet source screening out search items I get to see what is there and I choose what I want. It's catagories are static, where increasingly search engines include extraneous information to sift and that wastes my time. I don't want to see yellow pages go away, however, they could easily be "opt-in."