As kindle outstrips book sales, as San Francisco effectively bans the book, and Melbourne and Sydney ditch the white pages, how long do you give the phonebook?

6-18 months?

2-4 years?

Don’t care – we just want an opt-in system

A spokesperson for Yell confirmed the restructure when questioned by the ‘Say No To Phonebooks’ campaign team, but maintained the Yell Groups’ commitment to the environment.  The responsibilities of the role will now be assumed by the existing Corporate Social Responsibility Manager and the Corporate Social Responsibly Project Manager.    

The restructure came to light when a member of the public, Mark Thomas, asked Yell if he could speak to their Environment and Sustainability Manager but was told by Yell’s Customer Service team that he was no longer at the Company. Mr Thomas was keen to speak to Yell with regards to the unwanted Yellow Pages he has been returning to the Company.

Say No To Phonebooks have calculated that seventy five million phonebooks are produced in the UK each year – enough to cover Hyde Park twice. The annual production of these directories alone uses enough electricity to power 59,000 homes for a year and unleashes 79,360 metric tonnes of carbon emissions. Since 41% of households no longer use paper directories, almost half the natural resources wasted in the production and recycling of unwanted phonebooks could be saved each year.

192.com and the ‘Say No To Phonebooks’ campaign have teamed up with origami expert, Mark Bolitho, to provide three easy to follow guides that make use of those unwanted phonebooks by creating origami Christmas Tree, Star and Angel decorations.

To download the instructions and to watch the videos visit the origami decorations page.

So don’t just throw your useless phonebooks away! Why not get the kids or your colleagues involved and make something fun this festive season.

Over 75 million printed phonebooks are produced and delivered in the UK every year. That’s 62,000 tons of unwanted waste!

Did you know that the annual production of phonebooks squanders:
• Enough electricity to power 59,000 homes for a year
• 680,000 barrels of oil (the annual consumption of 67,000 people)
• Two billion litres of water, enough to fill 800 Olympic swimming pools
• £7.5 million of council waste management budget

The production and recycling process for 62,000 tons of phonebooks equates to 79,360 metric tonnes of wasted carbon emissions!

Make a stand against this unnecessary waste of resources and sign the petition supporting a centralised opt-in system for phonebooks. The petition already has over 6700 signatures with that number growing daily.- http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/NoPhonebooks/