For the past few years, the fine folks from the Yellow Pages have been dropping off residential and business directories at my house, and every year I immediately promptly throw the tree killers tomes into the recycling bin.
Imagine my surprise to get a notice from Yellow Pages that as “a responsible corporation” that “proactively” integrates environmental considerations into the decisions they make every day, I won’t be getting a paper Toronto residential directory for 2009 unless I ask for one.
At first, I was excited that it meant I would never receive a tree-killer directory again. Then, I read the 2010 Yellow Pages will be dutifully delivered now that Yellow Pages has decided to only do deliveries every two years.
If Yellow Pages were smart, they would offer consumers the ability to “opt in” or “opt out” of the tree-killer version. I’d opt-out right away simply because I use the Web as a digital directory, and any move to save trees and support the environmental is a good thing.
Of course, I realize the Yellow Pages (tree-killer) directory is a lucrative business even if it is gradually disappearing. So, I don’t expect Yellow Pages to make it easy for me opt out. Still, this is 2009 and more of us are trying to been green.
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The environmental issue is not the only problem with the Yellow Pages. It's also context. The Yellow Pages model is build on whoever pays the most gets the biggest space. So you can be quite bad at what you do, pay a lot, and you get visibility. Sites that have context like ours at HomeStars.com, and Gigpark and others like it is that not only are they directories, they provide context in real time. You can find out what a company did last week by reading their customer's reviews.
Oh, ya, and the tree thing is bad. In our office building a pile of about 80 yellow pages is stacked up by the door about every 6 months. I'm quite certain none of them get used.
I agree that you should opt in or out of the distribution and that killing trees is bad. I don't think they will stop it anytime soon though. They still make ton of dough. A half page ad in one zone of Toronto costs 50,000 if you want to go full run it will be 150,000. For some types of businesses like plumbing for example these ads do work. There is still an older layer of population especially here in Canada that like to get stuff old fashioned way.
I use my yellow pages as a monitor stand though.
Full transparency here – I am the Senior Manager of Communications for Yellow Pages Group (YPG). First, it is important for me to point out that the move to a 24-month distribution cycle for the residential directory in Toronto is nothing new. In 2006 we moved to a 24-month cycle to meet the evolving needs of consumers who told us through surveys that they thought it was a good idea to receive the residential directory every other year.
I would also like to assure you that we’re very sympathetic to environmental concerns and committed to minimizing our impact. For example, our directories are made from post-consumer recycled fibre and residual wood chips so, contrary to popular belief, no new trees are cut down. We also work with municipalities and businesses to ensure old directories get recycled.
I am also proud to share that just today, YPG became the first national organization to join the Changing The World, One Step At A Time program developed by Équiterre, a leading environmental organization in Quebec, and supported by Green Communities Canada in the rest of the country. In the coming weeks, we will also be launching an initiative that offers consumers an easy way to customize and choose their directory order. To learn more about this initiative, see http://www.ypg.com/environment.
And finally, since this blog is all about digital and social media, you and your readers should be aware that earlier this month YPG launched a user-friendly tool to easily search for local businesses and people using a BlackBerry smartphone or Apple iPhone. The application can be downloaded directly to a Blackberry smartphone by visiting BlackBerry® App World™ at http://www.blackberry.com/appworld or by simply entering http://installyp.ca/blackberry from the device. iPhone users can download the YellowPages.ca application by visiting the iPhone App Store or by entering http://installyp.ca/iphone.