News & Events

Opt-out of Phone Books & adopt the 4Rs

How trashy are you? Have you adopted the 4-Rs in your life, rather than the “3″: Rethink, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle? “Rethinking” means to reconsider the choices you make prior to acquiring something.  What will be the fate of the item at the end of its useful life?  Is there a smarter choice that you can make to eliminate this item from the waste stream entirely? Many of us recycle, reducing our contribution to landfills, but the next step is to take action to stop generating the waste in the first place.

Which leads me to the phone book debacle.  They just don’t stop coming!  It seems that every month or so, another appears in my mailbox.  According to Earth911.com: “each year 660,000 tons end up in landfills across the country.”

Recycling is an option, however consider stopping the number of pesky telephone books from being delivered to your mailbox in the first place.
Go to: https://www.yellowpagesoptout.com/ enter you zip code to see what your options are.  When I checked my address, I was receiving 7 phone books a year! I did choose to continue receiving just one phone book because I do worry about when I want information and my “trusty” internet is down.

How do you do the 4Rs?  Send your hints to editor@valleycoop.org to help us all stop being so trashy!

Print