Death Becomes the Phone Book

DEATH BECOMES THE PHONE BOOK With more and more people using the internet to look up contact information, the traditional white pages have become obsolete and yet most state laws still require phone companies to deliver them to every landline subscriber. While great progress was made on the "optin" front over the past year, there is still plenty of work to be done to ensure that print phone books are a thing of the past. Majority of Americans Don't use, Recyde or Want the White Pages Phone Book FEW USE IT VERY FEW RECYCLE IT WIDE SUPPORT FOR OPT-IN THE SHIFT TO PAPERLESS 7 out of 10 Americans don't use white pages phone books to find phone #s or addresses for people or businesses. 60% of adults find contact information online 87% Only 22% of adults recycle their phone books support optin initiatives to receive the phone book only if requested HOW PEOPLE FIND CONTACT İNFORMATION ONLINE Online Directories - 29% Search Engines - 28% Social Networks - 3% TELCOM SUPPORT Verizon has successfully secured permission from verizon regulators in 9 of the 12 states in which it oper- ates land lines to stop automatically delivering the residential white AT&T estimates that in places where they have been allowed to implement opt-in distribution, only 2% of customers have at&t asked for a printed copy. pages. STATE SUPPORT AT&T has been granted permission across parts of Texas, Ohio, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma, Missouri, and In 2012, Maryland will become the first state to enact a law that will require con- sumers to optin phone book. at&t wisconsin. receive a white pages Since 2007, 18 states (more than 1/3 of the US) have practiced some sort form of opt-in, some statewide, most in certain counties. ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT ITIII 1 T-3K mt Verizon estimates they use 17,000 tons of paper each year printing phone books. An estimated 165k tons of white pages phone books end up in landfills every year. $$$$$$$$$ =1 MILLION TONS $ $$$$$$$ Every year, the production and disposal of phone- books generates 3.57 million tons of CO2. Recycling unwanted phone books costs taxpayers $17 million each year. 5MM TREES ARE CUT DOWN EACH YEAR TO PRODUCE WHITE PAGES PHONE BOOKS* 100,000 TREES CHOPPED JOIN THE BAN THE PHONEBOOK MOVEMENT! Support both telephone companies and consumers in their efforts to curb the unsolicited, and unnecessary, printing and delivery of white pages phone books. If you want to have a choice about receiving a phone book, join more than 9,000 fans on Facebook ¡IIIIII X 1,000 facebook. and more than 100,000 people who have signed our petition to lawmakers. SOURCES: http://www.whitepagesinc.com/press/orticle/000000219 http://www.banthephonebook.org http://www.uiowa.edu/"ipro/Popers%202010/Phonebooks%20Final.pdf http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/20/time-to-scrap-the-white-pages/ white pages. *The SMM number is an internal estimate that we come up from based on informaton that we obteined from a number of sources including the FCC. the Product Stewardship Instite and Conservotree. The 165k number comes from the Product Stewordship Institute that estimates 660k tons of phone book waste enters landfills each yeor. Twenty seven percent of all phone book directo ries are white pages, which means that they equate to 165k of the estimated 660k tons of wastes that end up in landfils each year.