The Big Yellow Book

The only places I see people using phone directories are in movies. They are usually used in interrogation scenes.

I absolutely hate getting them every year. They waste trees, energy, water, human resources, and my time. Even if you are morally ambivalent toward phone books, I’m sure you can agree that in the internet age, they are useless, heavy, and a pain in the ass to get rid off.

Get my point?

I am deeply disturbed that they keep coming every year as jumbo sized junk mails. So I decided to speak up. I emailed the Yellowpages, and actually got a reply the next morning. Here is the conversation:

Title: About the Thick Phone Directories I Get on my Doorstep Every Year

Hi,

I live in Vanocuver, and I get phone directories from you guys every year. It’s very nice of you to deliver them to my doorstep every year, but the truth is, I never use it, period. Whenever I get it I worry about recycling it. I know it’s printed on recycled paper and you guys try to make it as environmentally friendly as possible, but I think not printing them is the most environmentally friendly way to go, at least not for people who don’t use them. Furthermore, it’s potentially an explosive PR issue if environmental groups decide to pick on you guys. I know in Norway a few years back it became a huge national issue that the law mandated the companies to switch to an opt-in model.

Hope you guys can consider it. Oh and please please please don’t send me a canned reply. I absolutely hate that because I have no idea if my message has been read or not. Just something simple would be great, something human.

Thanks for your time,

Scott

Here is the reply:

Title: RE: About the Thick Phone Directories I Get on my Doorstep Every Year

What I can definitly do is pass your information on to marketing and our environmental group just to track public requests and concerns and thank you very much for taking the time to pass on your ideas.It is sort of a mixed bag as some people love the idea of strictly CD version and no paper, but then certain groups of people really do not like using the computer and prefer the book. If there is anything else please feel free to contact me.

So far not very interesting, but I like it that they deal with my email very efficiently.

*****

Note: I published this few months ago on my other blog. I figure this post is worth migrating. I think we need more people write them about this. Just found a Facebook group called The Yellow Pages Must Be Stopped! Funny how they use the same image as I did.