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.
