Publishers Are Making Efforts to be Green

While many of the bloggers and other phone book haters don’t want to believe it, the Yellow Page industry has once again stepped up its efforts to be even more environmentally friendly.

Even though the industry uses no virgin trees to make its paper (earlier post here), water soluble inks, and glues that allow the entire book to be recycled, now the Yellow Pages Association (YPA), in concert with the Association of Directory Publishers (ADP), announced formal Joint Environmental Guidelines for the directory publishing industry.

Already the guidelines have been adopted by most  major publishers representing some 90+ percent of the industry output.  The Guidelines focus on source reduction of directories (white and yellow), enhanced recycling programs and environmentally sensitive manufacturing practices.

So DO NOT believe the many bogus blog posts you read that the industry is responsible for cluttering landfills (directories are only about .3% of the total waste stream), that we are wasting precious resources (publishers use on average about 40% recycled content in their paper), or that they will not allow people to opt out of their products.  It just ain’t true.

But those so vehemently insist THEY don’t want a book — how are you going to find that local computer repair store when your PC is busted????  Maybe you should keep at least one of those print “dinosaurs” around just in case.