“It’s is a fire hazard that you’re creating here”, said the Yellow Pages Montreal spokeswoman. You couldn’t make it up!

Meanwhile, two directory publishers sued Seattle because they didn’t want to let residents decide if they wanted to receive business phone directories (read the full story). Surely if the directory providers had setup and publicised a centralised opt-in system earlier, the public wouldn’t have felt the overwhelming need to setup one themselves.

Acknowledging the inefficiency and environmental cost of mass-produced phone books, US regulators are granting permission for telecoms companies to stop mass producing residential white pages.

Below are edited extracts from a November 11 AP dispatch written by reporters Michel Felberbaum, Samantha Gross and Peter Svensson: 

In the past month , New York, Florida and Pennsylvania approved Verizon Communications Inc.’s request to stop distributing residential white pages.

New York-based Verizon’s plan is to seek regulatory approval in all 12 states where it operates land line telephone service. In total, the savings could top 17,000 tons of paper annually throughout Verizon’s service areas, the company said.

Regulators in New York approved Verizon’s request Oct. 14. There, the company estimates it will save about 3,575 tons of paper per year and conserve the energy associated with printing, binding and distributing the directories. The company’s August request with Virginia regulators is estimated to save about 1,640 tons of paper annually.

Since 2007, states that have granted permission to stop printing residential listings or that have requests pending include: Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia and Wisconsin.

Telephone companies argue that most consumers now use the internet rather than a phonebook to look up a residential number, in particular mobile numbers.

“You probably have a better chance of finding a name quicker if you can just search for it in a database than try to look it up in the white pages,” said Link Hoewing, Verizon’s vice president of Internet and technology policy.

Read the full article here: http://tinyurl.com/26cybdw

The development encourages the UK to keep up with the times, to follow Denmark, the Netherlands and the USA in adopting an opt-in system for phonebooks.

We want the UK Government to pursue environmental best practice with a centralised opt-in system for phonebooks, synchronising the supply of paper directories with demand.    

From implementing a centralised opt-out facility to charging directory publishers a fee for every book it distributes, this City Council has identified that the cost of recycling the directories shouldn’t necessarily be their burden to carry.  

It seems now, more than ever, the LGA should put the onus on publishers to ensure directories are only delivered to those people that actually want them.  It saves council funds & saves the environment. What are they waiting for?

The directory publishers in the UK argue that people can opt-out if they want to by contacting each directory publisher individually, however independent research proves that only 30% of people are actually aware of this. It strikes me that we’re going to have to try a little bit harder if we’re going to reduce the UK’s waste problem – not to mention this unnecessary use of council funds when the government is looking to shave whatever it can.

The article goes on to explain that 6 million people in the UK don’t have access to the internet. Is that who we’re producing 75 million phonebooks a year for?

Alongside producing this shiny new format, that will fit through letter boxes and only serve to infuriate people who have expressly requested not to receive junk mail even more, couldn’t BT invest to communicating it’s opt-out facility (which independent research shows is only known about by 30% of people – compared to almost 60% for the MPS). Given that both BT & Yell have reduced the size of its directories this year to ’save paper’ and that 70% of Brits would support an opt-out for phonebooks, shouldn’t we just take the next logical step and setup a centralised opt-in system for phonebooks? Come on, do the environmental a real favour!  

In the meantime, if you wish to opt-out of the phonebook,

• For BT call 0800 833400 then press option 5 then option 1
• For Yellow Pages call 0800 671 444
• For Thomson Local email info@thomsonlocal.com or call 01252 555 555 

Wouldn’t a centralised opt-out system for phonebooks be easier than calling all 3 directory publishers?

The school is currently aiming for an Eco award and so hosted an eco afternoon where each class had the task of creating something out of unwanted yellow pages. One class created a ’Yellow Brick Road’ from directory pages  which every child laid along the path to the school hall. Others made origami birds, bird nests and much more. But our favourite is this amazing chicken which is now standing guard over the birds nests. The left over paper will be used for the bedding for real chickens which are arriving in April. Fantastic stuff!

If you’ve got children at a loose end this easter, why not try out some origami too? 
Download Easter Origami Instructions >>
     

Drilling down a little deeper on their site and we can see they’ve recently started their own ‘Generous action’ encouraging people to opt out of receiving a yellow pages directory. This action was the result of almost 150 people retweeting their instructions for opting out of receiving this phonebook recently.

This brought us to a point that’s been repeated a couple of times by printed directory advocates in - ‘people already have the option to opt-out and the numbers of people taking up this option are relatively low’. Well, perhaps if these instructions were easy to find at the front of phonebooks and on directory websites, maybe the number of people opting-out would be much higher and indicative of how people feel about these unwanted directories? It will be interesting to see how this figure increases with sites like Generous and tweeters spreading the word….

In Australia, green bloggers are claiming, “Phonebooks are heavy, thick, and mostly unwanted due to the arrival of the on-line phone directory and mobile  phones! When was the last time you used one of these paper dinosaurs? Who is sick of getting them each year, and never using them?” (Read the full Simple, Green, Frugal Co-op post).

While in the US, one pastor has claimed that understanding cultural evolution over the last decade can help communications become more like YouTube and less like phonebooks - something thats “picked up and promptly deposited in the trash”. He went on to say, “Heavy printed phone books represent more than telephone numbers and ads. They represent the past, communication forms that used to work the best, and a dog-eared determination to hang on to the past no matter what” (Read the full Barry Whitlow post).

With this international resentment growing, it’s encouraging to see that US lawmakers are going so far as to propose fines for unwanted phonebooks (Read full 9news.com article). Isn’t it time the UK government started to address the issue rather than just turning a blind eye?

While this latest announcement has been picked up by the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail, we think it’s worth us responding to Age Concern in the Daily Telegraph article. The ‘Say No To Phonebooks’ campaign is calling for a system where printed directories are be available only on request and not delivered automatically. This will balance the need for directory access for the elderly with environmental and government expenditure concerns.

Over the weekend, Junk Buster have reported thousands more people have contacted Yell, Thomson & BT to ask to be excluded from future phonebook deliveries. To take action today, sign up on JunkBuster’s site and sign our petition on the Downing St website. Time is running out to sign the Downing St petition so forward the link on to all your friends and colleagues to make your voice heard.