Saturday, November 21, 2009

junk


The free and automatic distribution of phonebooks is supposed to be a public service, but it's actually a detriment to the appearance of our streets and to the environment. Apart from merely creating litter, printing so many books is hugely wasteful. The number of phonebooks delivered annually outnumbers the entire population of the U.S. by two to one. When more convenient, up-to-date, and paperless directory options are available online, we have to ask ourselves why so many phonebooks are still being printed.
Luckily, this problem hasn?t escaped notice by municipal and state governments.--Next American City
(Though the City of Charlottesville appears to be fine with the practice. The current crop is from "Your Community Notebook". Previously)

Your Community PhoneBook is published by YPG Directories, LLC, division of Yellow Pages Group Co. in Canada.
Your Community PhoneBook and yourcommunity.com are trademarks of YPG Directories, LLC in the United States.

Labels:

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Tax 'em, so users will have to buy them. I use a phone book once a month at most. Tax the junk mail, too, by lifting the subsidies. Bear

10:46  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I know the "free" publications mouldering on the roadside are a special peeve of yours, mine too, and you've posted on your blog about it before.
It's all about the hypertrophy of the "marketing business" where numerous folks find they can "sell advertising" instead of getting a real job, and people in business are often foolish about their spending on promotional stuff. The beauty of it for the purveyors is the results of what they do are impossible to quantify. My long held view is the vast majority of this sort of advertising is simply a black hole into which money disappears...
Virtually all the "faux phone books" either go straight into the garbage or turn to compost on the roadside, along with the packets of coupons like the "ValPak" program. In my world all mail would be first class and people dropping useless "Yellow Books" and "community phone books" would all face hefty fines for littering...All this is part of the "Grifter Economy"

08:50  

Post a Comment

<< Home