Another paper domino falls.

when i worked on western avenue, we'd get carpet-bombed with phone books once a year. i'd get 5 or 6 of them dropped off in front of my little cafe, and the spice shop across the street would get even more. if i was around, i'd gather up the stack they left me and carry them back to their delivery van.

Opt-in please!

These companies that deliver the books have no idea who opts in or out. They hire immigrants who don't speak english. The immigrants drive up to an apartment building in a van loaded with phone books. They buzz apartments until someone lets them in and then start piling books into the lobby of the building. The books sit there until someone gets sick of looking at them and throws them in the recycling.

There is no opt-out here. There is no honor here. It's just plain waste. The more books that get delivered, the more the publishers can claim people read them, and then the more they can sell to businesses who advertise in them. ENOUGH.

My apartment building gets two huge stacks of phone books, and they seem to reside near the entrance for a few weeks until the landlords decide that they want to clean up and throw them out.

We will crush their attempts to make ad revenue killing trees to print stuff they distribute free. More coverage in this week's Stranger, free at a newsstand near you.

Great idea. Now if there was only some way to correct all that incorrect information that's all over the Internet. You have no idea how many wrong numbers I get.

I get about 50 pounds worth of phone books a year and I never use any of them. Maybe we can use them all to soak up the oil spill.

If Yellow Pages dropped off 1 frickin' book a yr that would be fine but there are 2 or 3 or 4 other orgs that drop off 2-3 books. Seems we get about 10 a year. One for the east side, one for d'town Seattle, one for King, one for Snoho. . .we don't need them all. I end up using them as fire starter for my grill, my woodstove or my fire pit.

Unless the city/state/federal makes delivery of unsolicited mail like this illegal, why on earth would it stop?

People pay money for advertising, so Yellow Pages/whomever keeps sending us the damn books. They won't stop until their hands are legally forced.

But ... if we get rid of all those phone books, what will I throw at Fnarf?

@10 Gideon's Bibles?

I very briefly delivered phone books a number of years ago when I was desperately underemployed. If the process still works the same as then, basically you were hired to deliver a specified number of books in whatever neighborhood you were assigned. There were supposed to be people who would follow up with random spot-checks to make sure books were delivered properly, and not for example dumped in big piles at a handful of locations, as several previous comments have suggested, or worse, simply thrown away. But, so far as I was aware, the spot-checks were handled with about the same level of efficiency as the deliveries themselves, that is, almost none.

Nowadays, when I find the books on my front steps, they don't even make it inside, but go directly into the recycling bin.

well, I took this as an excuse to opt out of junk mail. Hadn't done it for my new address. Thanks slog.

As 3 and 12 said, opt-out won't work because of how the phone books are delivered. I know I haven't used a phone book in years, when I see it at the door it goes right back out to the recycle.

They do make fun targets though, maybe next time they are delivered I'll grab a few from the neighbors (who also don't want them) and put a few holes in them before they go to the recycle bin.

"An opt-in approach would make it much harder for millions of local, small businesses to market themselves to the community and would hurt the publishers who employ thousands of people"

I think that's called "waste".

Honestly, phone books aren't any worse than the rest of the junk mail.

A years worth of phone books is probably not even equal to the waste of a months worth of junk mail.

Forcing them to honor opt-out requests would alone make a big difference

It would help just knowing in advance which day/week they're being dropped. Then people could just hang signs "no phonebook please".

Here's a simple plan if they have to switch to opt-in. Instead of passing out phonebooks, they'll pass out door hangers. "Tick the box and leave this doorsign up if you want phonebooks"

Hell, I'd like to opt out if most of those damned pizza flyers and Geico ads as well as the yellow pages.

The last time I used the yellow pages, the company (an ISP) didn't even have a basic listing. And white pages? Given that most of the folks I know don't even have a landline anymore, I'm not sure what the use is.

I remain undecided about plastic and/or paper bag fees or bans.

Phone books! Ban them! Lynch the people that print them! Or we can burn them at the stake with their own phone books!

Our phone books aren't delivered by illegal immigrants; they're delivered by chain-smoking white heroin addicts in extremely clapped-out white vans. I caught one as I was coming out of the door once, and I almost died from the profound reek that was coming off him, more than just cigarettes -- I think his copious dripping sweat itself was 9% alcohol.

Even I, a traditionalist who still uses the Yellow Pages once or twice a year, agrees that they've outlived their usefulness. The Qwest ones maybe, but the terrible shitbooks from Verizon are useless even to people who DO like paper phone books.

Same boat as #4.

I've always wondered if phone book circulation rates—and therefore, presumably, ad rates—are audited like newspapers and magazines are, or if they're reporting fraudulent circulation numbers based solely on the number of books dropped off.

I can't imagine it's terribly expensive to place a Yellowbook ad, but they're probably still overcharging.

Most small business owners in Seattle will tell you that the yellow pages are expensive and worthless.

My no. 1 source of new business is the Internet. No. 2 is word of mouth. And "word of mouth" often means Twitter.

The phone directory industry is going to try to play the "You're hurting Mom and Pop businesses!" card when facing any restrictions on their current carpet-bombing delivery practices. Pure crap. Mom and Pop are paying the directory companies their hard-earned dollars for advertising they aren't getting. If the most current edition of the yellow pages goes directly into the recycling or garbage, what did Mom and Pop get? The bill for paper production, printing, and delivery.

The bottom line is that the $31 billion phone directory industry is in large part a waste-for-profit machine. They fear Opt-In because they know that a large percentage of households don't want their product. And as for the industry-generated stat of 75% of adults using a phone book each year?! Where was this study conducted? A nursing home in Pheonix? NO WAY do 75% of Seattleites still use this antiquated means of getting information.

#15 poster is on some phone book company's payroll. Lame try on the waste spin:

"An opt-in approach would make it much harder for millions of local, small businesses to market themselves to the community and would hurt the publishers who employ thousands of people. I think that's called "waste".

Those small businesses pay a lot of money to advertise in the various yellow pages directories, and they aren't getting the exposure they're being told they're getting. That's the reason the industry doesn't want Opt-In. Opt-In would reflect the real numbers of who's still using the phone books. A lame Opt-Out that puts the responsibility on every single resident to get ahold of the phone directory companies themselves means that all the people who could care less about waste won't take the time to call or go online to opt-out. They'll just keep throwing the books in the garbage as they come. People who use the books will ask for them, because they have value to them. If people don't care enough to make a one-time request to keep getting a product delivered to their front door for the rest of their lives, they aren't using that product.

I wonder if poster #15 would also argue that it is wasteful to cut back on jobs producing DDT and asbestos? It is wasteful to cut jobs that make waste. Good point.

So all of you on here must be smarter than every advertiser in the phonebook. Why would they pay to advertise in the phonebook if it didn't generate business for them? Sales reps in the phonebook industry must be the greatest salesmen and women there are if they can sell advertising that you people say doesn't work.

That's fine if the yellow pages are working for people. They can keep getting the phone books. The point is to stop delivering them where they aren't wanted. "You people!" What kind of planet do you want to live on? Global warming's a hoax, right?