Hey, there! Log in / Register
Cambridge getting tired of phone books
By adamg on Mon, 02/07/2011 - 9:34am
The Cambridge City Council today considers establishing a local opt-out program for residents who no longer let their fingers do the walking.
Councilors Marjorie Decker and Leland Cheung say phone books created "a tremendous amount of waste" and force the city to dispose and recycle them in "an age when the Internet is a more highly used method of information." Their proposed order instructs the city manager to look at the feasibility of a system for letting residents indicate they no longer want the weighty tomes.
The council meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
...I wonder how much it costs
...I wonder how much it costs the city to recycle the phone books. Since, if I presume correctly, the majority of residents don't use them, the company who makes the phone books is essentially dumping their garbage on everyone's front steps.
They're not the only ones
At least once fortnightly I get a wad of garbage in my mailbox from some "Globe Direct" (or something like that... I've stopped paying attention) spamvertiser. It's a little circular that goes straight to the recycling bin, and I really wish I could make them stop, but since it's sent via USPS apparently I have to take their garbage for them. Seems like an awful waste of time and effort for all involved, though.
I, and everyone else in my
I, and everyone else in my building, used a web form to opt-out of various weekly advertising circulars a few years ago. Took a couple weeks to take effect, but our building haven't gotten a circular since.
Can't find which web site we used. Maybe it was ADVO? Look for a name on your circular, and Google it, along with "opt-out".
Same here
Yeah, I opted out of all of that crap, but now my postal person puts a circular in my box that ISN'T addressed to me; there seem to be plenty addressed to vacant lots, etc., and they don't read the addresses on the bulk mail and just put one in every box.
I have a sign on my mailbox that says we are on the "no bulk mail" lists and to please read the addresses on the mail. It's cut down quite a bit, but we still get a lot of junk mail that's not addressed to us.
This is definitely one part of my problem
I'm on several of the Direct Mail Association's lists, and that cut down on a few of the better offenders (typing that made me feel weird), but now some of them send to "Occupant" instead. When I've tried to get this new behavior to stop, I've been told they can't possibly do that because some future inhabitant of my apartment might want to get a packet of garbage every fortnight, and how will they know when that person moves in if they don't keep sending mail to Occupant? Occupant could miss out on valuable savings, to say nothing of time-share opportunities.
As for getting our mail carrier not to deliver garbage to us, we can't even get the current person to separate mail out for the intended apartments (he stuffs everything in my mailbox and I have to sort it into the boxes of the other units when I get home). I fear asking him not to deliver anything at this juncture would lead to madness.
Post office is actually pretty receptive
If you can manage to obtain the number of the office out of which your carrier works, and call them and tell them the mail is in the wrong boxes, they will talk to the carrier. Whether the carrier will care is another matter, but the postal service in general is pretty OCD. They take doing the job correctly very very seriously.
The national 800 number, however, is similarly dysfunctional to most national customer service call centers.
opt out website
http://www.yellowpagesoptout.com/
Look at that link
It doesn't actually work.
Even says so:
Alert: Directory publishers listed on this site generally do not accept opt-out requests from third parties or websites proclaiming to submit such requests on your behalf. Please protect your personal information by using this website to work directly with the directory publishers.
Which is worse for the
Which is worse for the environment: a few tons of wasted paper once a year, or a city full of mistimed traffic lights which make thousands of vehicles stop for no reason 24/7?
Who are you kidding
Massholes don't stop for traffic lights.
Phone books also a security concern
I live out in the suburbs and have more than once come home from the holidays and had one of these phone books in the driveway, wet and clearly sitting there for a few days.
All the work we put into looking like we're home, including stopping the mail, leaving on lights, etc., and the phone book becomes the "evidence".
Very frustrating since no one else is allowed to throw things into your yard...
Is it littering?
If you don't have phone service?
(I assume that having phone service would be the only legal ground for forcing phonebooks on people, the phone companies stating that the existing business relationship allows them to give you advertising.)
For that matter, is it littering/vandalism when people put fliers on cars?
Business relationship with phone book publishers
Nobody (except advertisers) has a business relationship with Yellow Book, because the publisher isn't a phone company.
If you get your landline service from someone other than Verizon, or you have no landline service and your cell provider isn't Verizon, then you don't have a business relationship with Verizon either.
Was thinking
of the Verizon superpages or whatever it is. Or if the phone company contracts might say somewhere in them that you agree to receive crap from their business partners, which might include yellow pages.
Otherwise, isn't it just littering?