As a libertarian, I would expect you to be of the mindset that other business’ rights end where your rights begin.

The only problem with phone books is they’re distributed early morning by temporary labor who probably don’t care if our addresses are on a list or not.

Maybe if communities forced the Yellow Book companies to pay for postage to MAIl the books – then that might be an incentive to follow junk mail opt-outs.

We launched the company because we were tired of all the junk mail we were receiving and we personally did not want to bounce all over the web to contact all the different companies to stop it all. First and foremost we wanted to let people choose what they wanted to let come to their home knowing that some people really do like some of the coupons and catalogs. So our clients choose what they want stopped.

We also had to provide a service that is different than the other services out there, so here is what we offer:

1. We have a database of over 1300 catalogs that you can choose to stop.
2. We have over a 2000 charities/Non-Profits that you can stop solicitations from.
3. Stop the delivery of the national phone directories.
4. Stop the delivery of the weekly coupons.
5. Stop the general credit card offers as well as the ones from your own major bank.
6. Stop the miscellaneous junk mail from the data brokers.
7. You can register on the National Do Not Call Registry from the website.
8. You can order your no strings attached free annual credit report right from the website.
9. We plant trees with every new membership.

And, yes we are a paid service and yes you can do everything that we do for free, if you want to do all the research and spend the time contacting the companies yourself it can easily be done. We have just done all of the legwork for our clients and feel there is value in the service we provide.

They’re an excellent resource on stopping unwanted phone book delivery. Check it out.

http://www.yellowpagesgoesgreen.org/index.html

PowderLover

I totally agree with the desire to opt-out. I’d take it a bit further and ask that we should have to opt-in to get the phone books. If I want it, I can ask.

I recycle them, but I shouldn’t have to take time to recycle something I didn’t ask for.

We wrote a post about this today also at http://current.pic.tv/2008/08/19/phonebooks-still-showing-up-like-bad-house-guests/

Ken also commented on my post, but I thought he was very civil in his tone, so I think him for that.

Thanks again for your post on this.

Cheers

if your local government is not recycling phone books, perhaps you should direct your consternation at them. Through your taxes you are already paying for recycling of beverage containers, newspapers, cardboard, etc etc etc. Each of those have their own little recycling issues too, but you never hear about those, do you.

And thanks for the promotion to “industry head”. But for the record I am but a lowly servant to businesses in the industry.

Peace be with you.