INC NEWS - Prohibit Unrequested Phone Books?

[RW Pickle]

It wasn't an analysis of the recycling costs, it is the actual figure
tidewater gets for driving by all of our houses every week; regardless if
we recycle anything or not. It may be a little off (maybe $1.47), but it's
somewhere around there. So recycling it isn't any more expensive than
anything else you might recycle (or not). It's actually more expensive
(and a waste of resourses which you seem to be more keenly aware of) to
thro it in the regular trash. It gets hauled all the way to Virginia when
you do that.

A large percentage of all paper today is aftermarket paper. Most phone
books will tell you they are printed on recycled paper. So instead of
wasting resourses as you mention, phone books (and much of what we see
today is at least 80% recycled) save resourses and recycle. It's an
endless life for phone books these days. Thrown away only to be reborn as
a new year in the same directory maybe by chance.

And then there are the jobs that would be lost by not producing the phone
books; the printers who have employees, the advertising salespeople, and
the delivery folks. The graphic artists who create the visual impact of
the ads, and whatever may be related to the information your talking phone
book might require to be produced.  I'm sure they guarantee that X number
of people will get them. And as bad or as good as it is, you are one of
those lucky folks. It keeps a bunch of people working so they can feed
their families and live the American Dream. So I can't see a downside in
keeping folks employed. And if there is any polution generated by the
creation of these phone books, I feel cetain that it all falls within
established guidelines of acceptability. Otherwise there are penalties for
breaking those laws.

I think you may be jumping to conclusions about "most of us" going to the
internet to get phone numbers. You may be right on the directions, but I
rarely go to the internet looking for a local number. I check the phone
book as I'm sure many people do. As I write this, I can look to my right
(on the floor) and see a phone book I regularly use. It's that easy to
grab and look up a number even though the computer is right here in front
of me. In my better days, I would race folks with calculators doing math
and regularly beat them. I feel the same way about looking up local
numbers in the phone book. It's pretty fast.


> Randy--The most recent one dumped at my door was the Talking Phone Book.
> And I'm not persuaded by your recycling cost analysis--it costs us in
> natural resources to produce something that is never used, it costs
> manufacturing cost--and the pollution costs associated with paper
> production, and the pollution costs associated with driving around
> delivering unsolicted and unwanted items--all of which we pay for in ozone
> and poor air quality, plus the costs of recycling them.
>
> Plus--if I need to know a phone number in raleigh or chapel hill--can look
> them up online--and mapquest for directions, as do more people every day.
> So the need for these massive tomes is declining. So it's way more than
> $1.49 for Tidewater to drive by my house.
>
> Kelly J.
>
> --On Friday, November 18, 2005 10:45 PM -0500 RW Pickle
> <randy at 27beverly.com> wrote:
>
>> I can't say this for sure because I do not know which books you received
>> this week, but they are different. One has Durham/Chapel Hill and the
>> other has Durham/RTP. There doesn't seem to be a comprehensive Triangle
>> phone book company. Something like "One Book". I think I even have one
>> that has Cary/RTP/Raleigh. All of these books come in handy from time to
>> time.
>>
>> And it really doesn't cost us any more to recycle them. Tidewater Fiber
>> (our recycling contractor) gets paid by the houses they drive by. If you
>> set nothing out, they still get paid. If you set out 500 phone books,
>> it's
>> all on them and we the citizens get our dollars worth (I think it's
>> actually something like $1.49 per house/per week; regardless if there is
>> a
>> pickup at each one or not).
>>
>> My gripe is that these folks do not have enough sense to see that I have
>> a
>> circular driveway. So I always get double the number of books delivered
>> as
>> I should.
>>
>> RWP
>> Forest Hills
>>
>>
>>> And I've called and asked to be put on a list not to receive them.
>>> Although
>>> they assured me I was on the list, I still got two of the damn books
>>> this
>>> week.
>>> Kelly
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> INC-list mailing list
>> INC-list at rtpnet.org
>> http://lists.deltaforce.net/mailman/listinfo/inc-list
>
>
>
>


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