8 Responses to “The Yellow Pages Goes Green!”

1. SHobbs 08/11/06 08:16

   

   Yellow Pages publishers don’t want to deliver to folks who don’t wish to receive the books. However, your readers should know that most publishers won’t take third-party lists for privacy reasons.
   And the site you mentioned knows that, yet they keep taking lists. If you don’t want to receive a particular book, go directly to the publisher and opt-out, either by phone or on their site.
   FYI,last year US consumers referenced the YP over 13.4 billion times, so many people still use the Yellow Pages to make purchases. For more information, go to our site http://www.ypassociation.org, and full disclosure, I work for the Association.

2. kenc 08/11/06 09:01

   

   as a very loving, green, cost oriented mom, you never used the coupons in the book?? You’ve never looked for local service providers? How about the front of the book which has all of the places you can recycle things??

3. Michelle 08/11/06 09:11

   

   Kenc, I use the internet for all of the above things: coupons, local service providers and I already know where to recycle things. I use the Yellow Pages Online.

   The reason that I have chosen to “go green” with the yellow pages is because we receive several of these each year- that is a lot of wasted paper when it only gets a few uses from us.

4. kenc 08/11/06 09:21

   

   Going green is a good thing. But let me also just caution you that some of the things you will find on the site you referenced are not true. For instance, the popular myth is that this industry is responsible for the neutering of forests. The facts are that 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. Not only that, as wood chips decompose, they emit methane, a greenhouse gas closely associated with global warming. Paper manufacturing thus puts these chips to good use.

5. Michelle 08/11/06 10:16

   

   Thank you for sharing this.

6. Rick Zwetsch 08/11/06 14:34

   

   It may be true that “Yellow Pages publishers don’t want to deliver to folks who don’t wish to receive the books.” And it’s great they’re not destroying anything to print books that some don’t want and get anyway. If it’s really true, the publishers should yell those messages just a little louder and more frequently so everyone would understand.

   But put yourself in the shoes of a local small business owner that’s paying lots of money every month for an ad in all those print Yellow Pages books. The very books that some people don’t use and therefore just don’t want anymore.

   I wonder if Yellow Pages advertising rates will go DOWN once they tally up how many people no longer want to receive the print directories and therefore how many people may never have a “chance” to see the advertiser’s ad?

7. michelle 08/11/06 14:56

   

   Do they not post any of the local advertisers ads on their website??

   I would think that the website gets much more use than the book does for most people 30 and under. (I may be wrong- but I know that most of the people that I know in that age range use the internet to look up phone numbers, etc).

   I try to shop local and use American made items as much as possible, but it is easy enough to find these items without a phone book.

8. Rick Zwetsch 08/11/06 19:11

   

   It all depends on what Yellow Pages publisher we’re talking about, what print target market area or grid, which ad program the advertiser signs up for, what extra benefits the sales rep throws in to get the business and the list goes on. I believe most print advertisers get some sort of ad or listing on the publisher’s online Yellow Pages site but figuring it all out can be a bit of a circus.

   And I guess the bottom line is – as a local small business owner/advertiser – the last thing you want when you’re paying good money for Yellow Pages advertising is…a circus.

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