Five Percent: Conserve a Little Energy

Our efforts to stop junk mail have been tremendously successful, thanks to GreenDimes. Our mailbox just has letters, a few local postcard and other things we want (almost no bills, because of paperless billing).

But every year, we get the “yellow pages” dropped on our doorstep. Actually we get a bunch of them. We never use them, so they make a direct line to our recycling bin.

One service that I didn’t know about, until I read my IdealBite email today, is a site called YellowPagesGoesGreen.Org, and which will send an opt-out request to yellow pages companies producing these books, for free. You can stop yellow pages and white pages here.

Kudos to YellowPagesGosGreen.Org (and for GreenDimes and other services like Catalog Choice)!

Some Facts about Yellow Pages and White Pages

The facts about these books, below, are not unexpected, I guess. But holy cow, it’s just such an incredible waste!

Ok, so I get a lot of spam in email (reduced because people got mad and did something), and we used to get a lot of unsolicited phone calls (reduced because people got made and did something) but I have to ask why we’re not way more angry about unsolicited mail? The first two are annoyances; unsolicited mail is both an annoyance and also a huge cost in mostly wasted resources.

Here’s a pretty much direct copy of a page I found on the site (I have asked for permission to reproduce it and will take it down if they object gotten permission to reproduce it.)

1. How many directories are printed annually in the United States? 540 Million
2. What is the average weight of the directories? 3.62 pounds
3. How much is the directory industry worth to the telephone companies in the United States? $13.58B
4. How much is the directory industry worth worldwide? $26B
5. How many fully developed trees are needed to make a ton of paper? 24 trees
6. How many gallons of oil are needed to produce a ton of paper? 380 gallons
7. How many cubic yards of waste is taken up by a ton of paper? 3 cubic yards
8. How many gallons of water are needed to produce a ton of paper? 7,000 gallons
9. How many kilowatts of energy are needed to produce a ton of paper? 4,000
10. How many directories are printed for EVERY man, woman, and child in the United States? 1.79 books per person

Go go for it and opt out now. I did, and it took less than a minute.

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