White Pages Or White Elephant?

By Nancy K. Crevier

As a teacher in the Danbury school system, Sandy Hook resident Christine Miller teaches her students the importance of recycling. So it burns her when she sees piles of phone books in plastic bags left to rot beneath mailboxes where they are automatically delivered every year and subsequently ignored by many of the recipients.

“I’ve lived here for six years,” said Ms Miller. “The first year I lived here, I noticed the phone books lying around as I ran, but I didn’t pick them up. They just stayed there, though, and started rotting,” she said.

So now, as part of her daily running circuit, Ms Miller makes note of how long plastic bags and phone books have lingered at an address and when it becomes clear that it is becoming one with the landscape, she recycles it at the AT&T office at 9 Queen Street or at the local landfill, where a special depository gathers only phone books, which cannot be recycled with other paper.

“So far this year, I’ve taken three trips to the recycling bin at the AT&T office or the town dump. It takes me the better part of the year to clean up the mess along my running loop, only to have it begin all over again,” said Ms Miller.

She questions the wisdom of phone books being distributed to every residence in an age when so many people use the Internet to access information — including the Yellow Pages online. “Times have changed. Among many wonderful advances, we now have something called the Internet where we can find anything we need in seconds. Apparently, no one told the phone company….” Ms Miller noted.

It may be a true case of information overload. Residents receive not only a copy of the Real White Pages, but the Real Yellow Pages for Fairfield County, the supplementary Real Yellow Pages for northern Fairfield County covering some of the same towns as in the Fairfield County version, and a bonus miniature Real Yellow Pages companion phone book for Fairfield County. It is 7½ pounds of names and numbers — the same ones that can be accessed online.

According to information provided by AT&T, more than 863,000 copies of the Fairfield County AT&T Real Yellow Pages and companion directories will be delivered this summer, as well as 90,000 additional copies of the northern Fairfield County suburban directories.

At the AT&T office on Queen Street, within days of the first deliveries of phone books to the area, the recycling bins out front were overflowing with not just unwanted phone books, but unwanted phone books still in the plastic bags in which they had just been delivered. Most of the bags appeared to not even have been opened. On several streets throughout town this past weekend, numerous orange plastic bags still peeped from the brush at the base of driveways, not yet retrieved. No doubt, some of the homeowners were on vacation or away and unaware of the delivery, but at other homes, signs of activity indicated that the pounds of paper tossed at the doorstep were simply being ignored.

An automated recording to the Connecticut Product Delivery phone book delivery service providing information for those seeking employment delivering directories, notes that pay is based on the number of routes and the number of books delivered. A spokesperson at that phone number did indicate that it is possible to request that a phone directory not be delivered, but the website provided did not supply that information.

After several convoluted phone calls that redirected the caller several times, a customer service representative at 800-479-2977 said that she could fill out a form for callers wishing to opt out of delivery of phone directories, and that the request would then be forwarded to the distribution center. The request should be submitted at least two months prior to the delivery dates for a region.

Simply dissuading a delivery person to drop off a phone directory may prove challenging, as Ms Miller discovered last year.

When she asked the driver of the delivery van to not leave one at her address, the driver “simply waited until I left and put one under my mailbox anyway,” she said.

AT&T representative Adam Cormier said that despite what seems to be an onslaught of phone directory disposal in Newtown, the books remain a popular advertising medium for local businesses. Many of the advertisers featured in the hardcopy version of the Yellow Pages also advertise online at Yellowpages.com, he said, and AT&T’s new U-Verse television service provides a similar service on channel 97. At that Yellow Pages channel, customers can pull up information for local businesses at no cost, he said.

There is method to the madness of multiple versions of the Real Yellow Pages received by Fairfield County residents, according to Mr Cormier. “We strive to print quantities that meet, not exceed, market demand. Each of our AT&T Real Yellow Pages directories serves a purpose,” said Mr Cormier. By compressing the northern Fairfield County businesses from the Fairfield County edition into its own directory, customers in northern sections can more easily find local businesses. Likewise, the mini-Yellow Pages are another option, providing a more portable version of the hefty mama Yellow Pages. Not only does AT&T believe these options to be useful to their customers, Naugatuck Valley customers can soon look forward to an additional phone book targeting just that area of Connecticut.

“The phone book has been around for 130 years,” commented Mr Cormier, who does not see a reduction in the number of hard copy directories being printed in the foreseeable future. In a typical month, 71 percent of adults continue to use the Yellow Pages, according to information Mr Cormier supplied, and consumers reference the books to generate 3.5 billion searches for local information every year. “The print business continues to be a strategic asset for AT&T and a valued resource for our customers,” he said.

Interestingly enough, the first directory was printed in New Haven in February of 1878 and is currently housed in the SNET archives at the Dodd Center on the Storrs campus of UConn. “It was just a single sheet, no phone numbers, and just the names of businesses,” Mr Cormier said. A 20-page directory printed in November of that year that contained the names and numbers of 391 subscribers around New Haven, as well as a few advertisements, recently fetched more than $170,000 at a Christie’s auction.

“The phone directory has been useful for 130 years and there are still people who rely on the hard copy of the directory,” he added. With coupons, maps, zip codes, and local government information included in the books, the directories provide more value than just the phone numbers, said Mr Cormier, as well as providing a back-up to electronic phone and address information.

In Newtown, however, the quantity of directories spoiling where they are deposited or trashed at recycling centers seems to indicate that residents no longer feel a need to let their “fingers do the walking,” as the old Yellow Pages commercial encouraged.

“This annual assault of plastic — made from oil — and paper — think of all the trees that were destroyed — needs to stop,” urged Ms Miller.

For those who do open the phone book, the customer service guide pages provide a telephone number to call for information on recycling old phone directories. Locally, Newtown residents are directed to the landfill on Ethan Allen Road, where outdated (and new) phone books will be accepted between July 10 and September 5. The AT&T office on Queen Street is not an AT&T approved recycling drop-off location.