(Photo: Brand X Pictures / Getty Images)By Lori Bongiorno
More from The Conscious Consumer blog
With Internet directories and cell-phone lookups, many people consider the printed yellow pages a relic of the past. But the books keep showing up on their doorsteps, year after year. Finally, there's good news for those who want to prevent stacks of unwanted phone directories from being delivered to their front doors.
A new, national opt-out Internet site from the Yellow Pages Association and Association of Directory Publishers lets you control which yellow pages (if any) you receive.
In less than five minutes, I opted-out of the 10 phone directories (both white and yellow pages) I was scheduled to receive this year. In the past, you had to contact each phone book publisher directly, and it wasn't always easy to find the publisher's contact information. But this new site lets consumers make all the requests at once.
Here's how it works:
- Go to yellowpagesoptout.com. Enter your ZIP code. You'll see a list of the phone books that you're eligible to receive.
- Register on the site. You need to include a valid email address and phone number along with your home address.
- You'll then receive a temporary password via email. Log in, change your password, and then click the "Opt-Out" tab at the top of the page and select which directories you receive. You can opt-out of everything or choose to receive which phone books are useful to you.
The opt-out should last for at least three years.
It's too soon to know if this will really work for every phone book publisher, but given that it only takes a few minutes, this is certainly worth a try for anyone who receives a slew of new phone books they don't need.
Looking to get rid of the piles of yellow pages that have accumulated over the years? If you have curbside recycling and your city takes mixed paper, then phone books can generally be recycled, according to Jennifer Berry at Earth911. You should remove any non-paper elements, such as magnetic inserts, before you toss them into your bin.
Environmental journalist Lori Bongiorno shares green-living tips and product reviews with Yahoo! Green's users. Send Lori a question or suggestion for potential use in a future column. Her book, Green Greener Greenest: A Practical Guide to Making Eco-smart Choices a Part of Your Life is available on Yahoo! Shopping and Amazon.com.
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