A Wee Rant on Wasting Paper

Yesterday morning, as I was packing up my car to go to the Duncan Saturday Market, I noticed that the newest edition of the Duncan telephone book had been thrown onto my deck. At some point after supper the previous night, someone had dropped it off.  I had seen her do it but was not really paying attention. If I had been - I would have gone outside and asked her to keep it.

I can appreciate that the process of printing this once needed service (approx. 17 cm x 22cmx 2.5 cm thick) must make money for someone. I assume that the companies that are listed in the Yellow Pages - which comprise approximately one third of the pages- pay for that privilege. Those companies must think that having a listing in the Yellow p ages is a productive way of advertising. The people who sell those ads, the folks who set up the pages on the computer, the people who run the printing and binding machines all must make a little bit of money. For some, it may be their primary source of income. Even the young lady who delivered the phone book must have made something although given the over-sized pickup she was driving, one has to wonder what her profit margin was. But is the book really needed?

Given the generally easy access to almost all information including the Yellow Pages on the internet and the overwhelming number of people who now have some sort of "smart'  phone almost permanently attached to one of their hands, one has to wonder why anyone would think it a good idea to universally distribute such a book. There was a time when a telephone book was a valued tool.  The phone book allowed people to find each other or to find services when there was no other way. The phone book, it could be argued, was as important for civilization as was the phone booth. Much to my disappointment, given the fact that I have been slow to embrace the concept that everyone needs to have a cell phone, telephone booths are very difficult to find in almost any city. Why? Because the telephone companies realize that no one really needs them. Perhaps it is time that people stopped expending valuable resources to print a book that is not similarly not needed.

If I thought that the book was distributed only to such communities as the one I live in - where everyone is older than 55 and I suspect the average might be closer to 75 or even eighty - perhaps the book would have some value. There could be an argument made that "old" people don't use the computer. While it is true that my neighbour next door is not computer literate, I suspect he is in the minority. Certainly all of his neighbours use the computer. However if this telephone book was produced only for people above a certain age - surely they could have made the print font just a wee bit bigger!

I lack the ability to calculate how many trees have been used to print all of the phone books across Canada. I think it would be a lot.

If I knew who to protest to - I would. But I don't , so I will take the old phone book that I got last year and have yet to open, chuck it into the recycling container. I suspect a year from now I will be doing the same thing with this year's phone book. Throwing it away - unopened.

Surely there is a better way.