Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Non-Profit (or Doing) of the Week: Yellow Pages Goes Green

It's time to clean out your cupboards folks, or prevent any future cluttering.

Phone books. They're huge. Averaging at 3.62 pounds a pop they could substitute for a dumbbell in your home workout area. And if you think about it, have you ever requested one (or several) of these books to be delivered to your door every year. No, they just show up like Saint Nick on Christmas eve and there they are. As much as there are still computer-challenged people out there who rely on them, most people today use the Internet to search for phone numbers. Hence, the need to seriously cut back on the printing of these phone books. Why cut back on printing? The environment of course! Check out the facts...

24 developed trees are needed to make a ton of paper
380 gallons of oil are needed to produce a ton of paper
3cubic yards of waste is taken up by a ton of paper
7000 gallons of water are needed to produce a ton of paper
4000 kilowatts of energy are needed to produce a ton of paper
1.79 directories are printed for EVERY man, woman, and child in the United States

Some scary stats those are. A college student from Liberty, MO was overwhelmed with the number of phone books delivered to his rented home and the work required to recycle them and founded yellowpagesgoesgreen.org. This organization works to educate consumers and promote the green movement to eliminate the unsolicited delivery of Yellow and White Pages books. The site (http://www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org/) is aimed at starting a national movement to solicit the White/Yellow Pages industry to proactively stop the delivery of books or to begin moving legislation to mandate the stoppage of this activity.

If you've got way too many of these books lying around unused you can visit http://www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org/ and use their awesome new service that allows consumers to “opt out” of receiving the unsolicited telephone books. The organization will contact the publishers and inform them to stop delivering books to your address. They do this by working with state and local governments on ordinances concerning the delivery of unsolicited telephone books. It's a great way to keep those trees up around you, do something good for the environment, and not spend a dime. Hey... isn't anyone who is anyone unlisted anyways?

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