Hmm. If the Seattle City Council can’t manage to pull the trigger on Mike O’Brien’s very sensible proposal to create a city-run registry to allow citizens to opt-out of receiving the yellow pages — thus saving innumerable trees, not to mention $350,000 a year in recycling costs — perhaps it should consider our surfeit of unwanted phonebooks as an opportunity to solve the city’s homeless problem?
The books form a ready made, insulated building module held in place with sheet metal angles normally used as drywall bead material. Once tensioned, the phone books form a stable wall into which additional layers can be easily screwed. The roof joists are also made of laminated phone books. The finished structure becomes a kind of time capsule, recording the names and numbers of community members.
Yeah sure, it looks kinda silly, but I mean, who the fuck actually still uses a phonebook these days to, you know, actually look up phone numbers and stuff? So this makes as much sense as simply tossing ’em straight from your porch, into the recycling bin.
Or, the Council could just give us the opportunity to tell the phonebook publishers to shove off.
I use a phone book, but they all suck except the one’s put out by Qwest, which don’t suck as much.
It is way faster to look in the book than on the web, unless it isn’t in the book…
I use a phone book when it takes too much time to boot up Vista on the laptop near the phone.
Stopping print directories isn’t going to save a single tree.
While the popular myth is that this industry is responsible for the neutering of forests, the reality is the Yellow Pages industry doesn’t knock down any trees for its paper!!! Let me repeat that – they don’t need to cut any trees for their paper supply. Currently, on average, most publishers are using about 40% recycled material (from the newspapers and magazines you are recycling curbside), and the other 60% comes from wood chips and waste products of the lumber industry. If you take a round tree and make square or rectangular lumber from it, you get plenty of chips and other waste. Those by-products make up the other 60% of the raw material needed. Note that these waste products created in lumber milling would normally end up in landfills. And the paper company in your area also employs several hundred people doing all this work.
For more information go here: http://www.yptalk.com/archive......38;CatID=3
I’m all for saving trees but for me the issue is minimizing my own contributions to the waste stream. If I could stop all directories for landing at my doorstep, I would. When they arrive they go straight into my recycling bin. I haven’t brought a directory into my house for a decade yet I get 3 or 4 a year.
Maybe they could use them to make public bathroom faclities? They wouldn’t cost a million dollars a piece.
In the past three years, about once a year, when the power or the internet connection is out, I need to use the phone book. Google has made the printed phone book largely irrelevant.
And I need one phone book when that happens, not three.
At least my cat appreciates the yellow pages. When the books are stacked, they make for a fine scratching post.
Seeing the photo above, I’m reminded that when I lived in Boulder there was a house there that was made out of pop bottles and mortar. It actually looked kind of cool.
Mythbusters did a piece on the strength of interlocking the pages of two phone books and trying to pull them apart. They needed a large bulldozer pulling at full horsepower to do so. Phone books are tough stuff, and the density would make great insulation. It is just too bad that most of the inks used are toxic.
kenc spews:
Stopping print directories isn’t going to save a single tree….
This person is a Yellow Pages industry hack who keeps spouting that bullshit. What do you think Yellow Pages are made of? Oh yeah, excess wood scraps. Bull Shit.
It’s time we move to an opt-in system for the Yellow Pages (industry suddenly doesn’t want to keep distributing the white pages – BECAUSE THEY MAKE NO MONEY ON THEM!!!). All aboard an effort to move towards an opt-in system join our FB Cause page, thanks.
http://www.causes.com/causes/274704
And I hope they’re paying you a lot, Ken C.
Must chime in on this one. And some fantastic thinking here guys. Nice. So, seriously – the only reason that the yellow pages and all the other giant ridiculous books that they deliver 3-4 times a year to your door are even an issue is that the industry hasn’t given up on the old fashioned way of looking up shit. Come on people – recycle that stupid book and move into the 21st century. I LOVE that these books could be come opt-out – but that is really going to test the industry’s tolerance for lost revenue. Yes, the ‘industry’ supports a few jobs but it’s time to move on, protect the environment and embrace technology. Google it baby!
What an excellent idea for getting rid of old and extra phone books! And since they’re all made out of recycled paper and wood chips, very sustainable.
You should ask the independent Yellow Pages companies if you could use their undistributed phone books to insulate sustainable homes – they usually have some left at the end of the year.