New Zealand Celsias

American cities are well ahead of ours when it comes to taking action on unnecessary and unwanted phone books. its interesting to look at two ways they have made this happen in the US.

Mayor Ed Lee in San Francisco signed a ban on the unsolicited delivery of the Yellow Pages into law on May 19th this year. Far fewer of us now use the big bulky phone book as a way of looking up information.It's the first such law in the country and is scheduled to take effect next year and will bar companies from leaving unsolicited Yellow Pages books at your house without the permission of the residence or business.

True to the American spirit, at least one organisation the Local Search Association, a commercial phone book industry trade group, has threatened to sue, claiming the ban violates its members' rights. What ? We can't say we don't need this and don't want it .

Last year the Seattle City Council voted 8-1 in favor of a new ordinance which creates an enforceable opt-out system restricting unwanted delivery of yellow page phone books. In addition, the distributors of the books will pay the city a per book ($0.14 per book) and per ton fee ($148.00 per ton) to recover the costs to the city to recycle the phonebooks and set up the opt-out registry. In Seattle Council Member Mike O'Brien took the lead and even asked citizens to bring him their unwanted books. His office was flooded with hundreds of books, creating mountains of books that his staff had to work around. A very visual demonstration of wasted paper and resource and a changing way of seeking information .

Seattle residents can go to a single web page to cancel either all phone book delivery, or to select the number and types of yellow page books they still want delivered.

Heather Shute of Environment Washington outlined the savings to the city, “According to Seattle Public Utilities, the city currently pays over $350,000 per year just to handle the recycling of phone books. In addition, many people toss the books into the trash, and off they go to the landfill!"

And of course Yellow Pages publishers filed a lawsuit against the City of Seattle claiming that the ordinance is unconstitutional and singles out phone book publishers unfairly.

Now California regulators have passed a law stopping the automatic delivery of telephone books.

The request came from Verizon who sought to end deliveries of printed white pages throughout the state.The California Public Utilities Commission granted Verizon's request to provide customers with an online, electronic version of the white pages. Customers also can continue to receive the traditional printed volume by request or they can request a free CD-ROM directory of residential listings.

This decision to go digital with residential listings is expected to save an estimated 1,870 tons of material from California's waste stream.BantheBook.org estimate that 5 million trees are cut down each year to create white pages phone books, and they say that only 22% of recipients recycle their phone books. They estimate that the phone books add 660,000 tons of waste to US landfills each year.

Strikes me that having phone numbers go digital is something that is long overdue. And its a lead that we could easily follow. If we don't use phone books any longer and don't want them -why waste all the resources that go into them?