YPs Goes Green to Preempt Complaints
The YPA and ADP adopted environmental guideliness to be good “corporate citizens” — part of the Yellow is Green initiative — but also to preempt an increasing call in some quarters for an end to unsolicited delivery of phone books. First the YP industry guidelines adopted:
To further demonstrate the Yellow Pages industry’s commitment to environmental responsibility, the Yellow Pages Association, in concert with the Association of Directory Publishers, today announced formal Joint Environmental Guidelines for the directory publishing industry. Already adopted by many major publishers, the Guidelines focus on source reduction of telephone directories, enhanced recycling programs and environmentally sensitive manufacturing practices.
On the other side of the discussion or debate is YellowPagesGoesGreen, an organization that seeks to facilitate the cessation of unsolicited print YP delivery in the name of helping the environment:
Yellowpagesgoesgreen.com is helping municipalities and local governments around the country establish ordinances to mandate Yellow Pages and White Pages only be delivered to home and offices that ask for them. Municipalities and local government that provide trash services are extremely concerned about the landfill cost and why they have to absorb the cost of handling the telephone directories.
Even if this site is not highly visible, it represents the formal emergence of an “opt-in movement” discussed here.
April 25, 2008 at 2:33 pm
Greg,
I looked over the http://www.YellowPagesGoesGreen.org site referenced above. The signed up and contacted them to make sure they got my info and how they were contacting the publishers. Per them they started the site on April 1, 2008 (which is why the are not highly visible but getting there). They have received thousands of sign ups and do send the info to the publishers to have them opt out the person that signs up. They told me some publishers have said thanks and some have said “we do not have to abide by the consumers request”. They said they have the compelete record of every sign up and have submitted it to some legislators across the country that have contacted them. The legislators intend to have the info when they get push back from the yp industry stating that no one really cares about this issue or there is not a way to pull this information toegether in a format that can be useful. I was very impresssed by these people. I think they have the knowledge, tools, and understanding to make the “opt out” program a reality.
April 25, 2008 at 3:57 pm
Will be interesting to see if it gains traction.