On Friday I received the annual copy of the Yellow Pages. It was deposited on or perhaps ejected on my driveway in a yellow plastic bag. So, just like I have done for the past three years, I removed the plastic bag and deposited the Yellow Pages directly into my recycling bin. I like the idea of putting the resources back into the system as soon as possible.
It is an interesting cycle in many different ways. First, isn't the Yellow Pages in physical form effectively obsolete at this stage? Second, there is the aspect of all of the energy and resources required to produce, print, and distribute the book. Third, there is the energy required to pick up the recycling each week, sort the contents, ship the paper to a place that no doubt sells paper pulp to the printing company. How long it will be until this practice is finally ended. It certainly can't be doing much for the environment, economy, or much of anything else. Of course, like many things, it is hard to let go of "tradition" even when it doesn't make rational sense.
2 comments:
I think you are being a bit obtuse in your thinking.
Those books you say you never use actually got referenced nearly 15 billion times last year. And that’s just the print versions. 90% of all adults reference them at least once a year, 75% in a typical month, and 50+% on average month. How about on average 1.4X each week?
The Internet is wonderful thing, but myth that it all we need doesn't hold water. The Wall Street Journal reported recently that the broadband market is about tapped out. There will always be a good percentage of the population that will never have access to the industry’s Internet products. Barely more than 50% of households in the U.S. (about 56 million homes), currently subscribe to a high-speed Internet service. An additional 21 million households still use dial-up connections (yes, you read that right – dial-up connections).
I guess I should have just added that I would like the option to "opt-out". There is no reason that I should have to participate in the process, but then they wouldn't be able to claim such statistics if they started selective deliver. My neighborhood is not one of those still using dialup, I can assure you of that.
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