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Sustainable Actions

Too Many Phone Books?

You can reduce the number of phone books at your home.  Just let the companies know that you are not interested in receiving them, find other uses for the ones you receive, or recycle them.


1.  Opt-Out

  • Dex One
    Go to www.DexKnows.com/green. Place your ZIP code in the box under Reduce/Request/Stop and click the arrow. Then fill out the form on the next page. Another option is to call 1-866-60-MY-DEX.
  • Yellow Book
    Call 1-800-929-3556 and press 2 to speak with a representative.
     
  • Other Phone Books
    Visit www.yellowpagesoptout.com to opt out of phone books for all publishers.

2.  Re-Use

If you miss the deadline and end up with phone books, find a way to reuse them such as:

  • Make a booster seat for your child. Most of us probably remember sitting on a phone book to reach the dining room table better.
  • Use them, sheet by sheet, as an alternative to paper towels. Clean windows and mirrors. 
  • Have a fire place, outdoor fire pit, or charcoal grill? Use them for kindling.
  • Use them for papier mache projects.
  • Shred or tear the pages and add them to your compost pile.
  • Use 10-page layers to kill the grass where you want a new garden bed. Simply layer the pages over the grass (overlapping them a bit), wet them down, and cover with mulch or leaves. In a few weeks, the grass will be dead and you have a new garden bed.
  • Use as a kneeling pad for when you're working in the garden.
  • If you're ripening or storing fruits, such as apples, wrap each fruit in a page from the phone book and store wrapped fruit in a box in a cool, dry place.
  • Make envelopes from them to store seeds that you save from your garden because you can make them in any shape or size you need.
  • Make pots for seed starting. You usually see this tip with newspapers, but it works just as well with pages from your phone directory.

3.   Recycle

Put them in the recycling container with your other curbside recycling.  You'll conserve resources and reduce the amount of landfill space.

For more information on a national effort to address the issue of over-publishing of phone books, visit the Product Stewardship Institute's Phone Book Project.

Source: OR Dept of Environmental Quality and Planet Green