Telephone Book Recycling: What to do and Why You Should Recycle Your Phone Book

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Ever wondered what you can do with the mass of phone books and yellow pages that never seem to cease showing up on your doorstep? Well, so have we! As annoying as this can be, the good news is that we have found a fantastic, eco-friendly solution to the problem. And no, I'm not talking about recycling your phone books, which considering that only 10% of phone books get recycled, you can and should do if you so happen to have any old phonebooks on hand (Visit earth911.org to find a recycling facility in your neck of the woods).

For the sake of this article, I'm talking about a solution that gets to the heart of the problem. Well actually, it's two solutions: YellowPagesGoesGreen.org and NuYello.com.

But before going into further detail about these great organizations, allow me to further elucidate on why something needs to be done to curb the production of telephone books in the first place. Did you know that over 500 million telephone directories are printed in the U.S. every year? No, you didn't crunch the numbers wrong - that's approximately two telephone books for every person in the country!

In order to produce said 500 million telephone books in one year, requires 19 million harvested trees, 7.2 million barrels of oil (not counting oil used in transporting telephone books to your doorstep) and 3.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. Furthermore, 1.6 billion pounds of paper are wasted and 268,000 cubic yards of landfill are used up from wasted telephone books when all is said and done.

Certainly, not all telephone books go to waste. That's why YellowPagesGoesGreen.org (the source of the above-mentioned figures, by the way) is the perfect solution for anyone who wants to go green and opt-out from receiving telephone books anymore. Simply visit their website, fill out the form (it's FREE) and they will contact publishers with the sign-up forms to ensure the phone books do not get published in the first place.

Unlike the do-not-call registry, which is managed by the government, yellow and white page delivery organizations are not held liable if a phone book shows up on your doorstep - Even if you contact them beforehand to cease from delivering! YellowPagesGoesGreen.org, however, gets to the source, thus saving trees and energy. Needless to say, the internet is rife with every business contact number you will ever need. In short, go with a telephone book opt-out and say goodbye to the yellow pages once and for all!

And for all you businesses out there, say hello to NuYello.com. Do your own part in going green and sign up with NuYellow to be listed in their newly launched online yellow pages directory. There's no cost to sign up, and doing so will inspire another business to follow suit.