I’m 100% with you on the phone book! What a waste! It comes to my door and then goes DIRECTLY into the recycling bin. I use the computer to find names/phone numbers and on the off-chance it’s not available, I go big and spend $0.50 on directory assistance! Besides, being printed once each year makes the phone book obsolete all-but immediately upon printing!

You go girl!

I get 4 phone books and don’t use one of them. I get a honking white pages, a honking yellow pages, a Kanata community phone book (I live in Kanata) in large print, and since my husband’s last name is Italian, we get a phone book from the Italian community with all the Italians in it. Doh.

The last Bell phone books we received went straight into the recycling bin. If I can’t look it up on the web, I don’t find it. I used to use the phone book strictly for restaurants and now don’t even do that.

The community book was nice to find services in the community, local repair people, for example.

Hi Bether!!

I am very happy the Red Dot movement came into life and people are thinking about elimination of waste. I don’t know the percentage of people without Internet, but phone directories should only be distributed on demand. I heard that Canadian Tire wants to stop printing their catalogue and I find this is a very good initiative. Please keep informing the people about this subject, since many of them just waste out of habit and are not thinking.

I think it’d be great to have an opt-out program for phone books. Like most others’ comments, I rarely - like maybe twice per year - use the 4 (!) delivered here every year (in fact I’m still using one that’s got to be at least 3 years old, with all of the ‘new’ ones just piling up in the wedge between my desk and the wall!).

Forest Ethics has a great anti-Sears Catalogue campaign going. The same kind of thing could (should!) be done with phone books. Also, I am considering simply taking the several copies I have (still in their plastic wrap) and just dumping them at Telus’ main office - if each of us anti-users could get 50 people we know to do the same, all on the same day, I think they’d be more inclined to listen to consumers who want to opt out.

See Forest Ethics’ campaign here:
http://www.catalogcutdown.org
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TO1h45pAzc&feature=user

I do find the phonebook cumbersome and not that helpful. I tend to go online to look up numbers or call my cell phone’s (Virginmobile) 411. Tthey are very helpful and the number is texted to your phone so you can save it. Well done. Alberta has a second phone directory called the Community Pages (I think?) that lists all residents in Central Alberta alphabetically. It is not user friendly at all. I know at the offices I have worked in, no one wanted it at their desk so the few dozen they would leave ended up in landfill. I think that we need to take it there as well. Keep up the good work and I will get on the list as soon as you have an idea on how to move forward.

I agree, we just got our phone books and they went directly into the recycling! What a waste! If there is a way to opt out I look forward to it!

Definitely think an advertised and easily accessible opt-out option is necessary. Wouldn’t get rid of them altogether because many people out there still don’t have Internet. But for those of us that prefer online searches, there’s no sense in annually printing a fat, fat phone book.

Thanks Simon for linking us into the new Facebook group. I have been doing some calling and gathering research for Forests Not Phone Books! A lot of us feel the same way about this. It will be part of our new website rebuild - coming this fall. Super Pages is having “internal discussions”. CanPages did not respond. So lets keep spreading the word to make it happen sooner! I agree, we can’t keep waiting for the perfect solution - we need to start.

Randy,
Congrats to Vernon for reducing your footprint! Good luck with your new sites and keep us posted on your progress.
Red Dot Campaign Team