Yellow Pages Goes Green

Here's a great grassroots organization to eliminate a few more pounds of waste per household every year. Yellow Pages Goes Green is a website where you can go and opt out of receiving the White and Yellow Pages. Here are some neat tidbits from the website about what goes into making these directories:

Over 500 million of these directories are printed every year. That is nearly two books for every person in the country! These directories produce a staggering amount of waste, not only in terms of misused natural resources but also in filling of valuable landfill space.

To produce 500 million books:

• 19 million trees need to be harvested
• 1.6 billion pounds of paper are wasted
• 7.2 million barrels of oil are misspent in their processing (not including the wasted gas used for their delivery to your doorstep)
• 268,000 cubic yards of landfill are taken up
• 3.2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity are squandered

It sounds like a great organization and I've already opted out. While it's not guaranteed that the printing companies will comply with my request to opt out, here's hoping I don't receive any more pesky phone books!

Here are some resources for locating information online and via your cell phone or landline:
411.com
ChaCha
ZabaSearch
1-800-GOOG-411 (I use this all the time, just ask my hubby!)