We Canadians

It is good to have one set of phonebooks in the house or in an office.  But why can’t the phone companies just issue an update every year? There is not too much that changes in the phone books every year – a few telephone numbers and perhaps,  some yellow pages. By issuing a supplement and not printing the entire phone books, the phone companies can save tonnes of greenhouse gases.

To figure out exactly how much is saved just look at the data compiled by the web-site “yellowpagesgoesgreen.com”. 540 million  telephone books are printed in the US alone, with an average weight of 3.6 pounds. And it takes 24 trees and 380 gallons of oil to produce one ton of paper.  It also consumes about 7000 galons of water. According to the web-site “goodhumans.com” this can add up to 19 million trees every year.

The telephone companies can also offer the directories on CDs or DVDs; this way they can put the cash-generating yellow pages into the mix. Of course, directory information is available on-line also but I don’t find it very convenient. If you miss-spell a name, you don’t get a hit, or you may get so many hits that you dont find the person you are looking for.  A CD or a DVD format would be just fine. Ideally it should be possible to download the directory information into the phone itself but this will probably require a new generation of smarter phones.

Consumers should be given the choice of not getting new phone books; in fact they should get a discount for not using up so much of the phone company’s resources.

So why not just pick  up the phone, call your phone company and tell them not to send the phone books the next time around. Or better still, ask for a CD version – sooner or later the phone company will get the message.