The Flight of the phone book
The family telephone book has always been there for us. It was a booster seat when we first moved from the high-chair to the big people’s table. It was the place where we found the phone number of the girl we invited to the homecoming dance. And it was the place where we first saw our name in print when we moved into that first apartment. But the phone book may be history.
“Yellow Page usage among people, say, below 50, will drop to zero—or near zero—over the next five years,” predicted former Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates. Such doomsday predictions are not without warrant. Surveys indicate that, today, fewer and fewer people rely on the old school phone directory.
These nostalgic volumes have had quite a run. Back in 1878, the New Haven phone book was a single-sided page with 11 residences and fewer than 40 businesses telephone numbers. By 1921, the Manhattan white pages were already being delivered to more than a million homes and businesses. Used to be the phone book was everywhere. Tucked under the phone. Up on a shelf. Hiddened in the bottom desk drawer. But sadly, the Internet is making this thick brick of information all but obsolete.
Save a Tree. Opt out.
It seems these big, bulky volumes that land on your front steps every year or so are getting used less and less. But they continue to present an ecological challenge. A recent survey indicated that only 15% of U.S. adults recycle their old, unwanted phone books. Your average citizen is largely clueless about the environmental impact of printing and delivering so many phone books. More than five million trees are chopped down every year to produce these antiquated encyclopedias of dialing. A Web-based phone book, WhitePage.com, is sponsoring a “Ban the Phone Book” initiative to encourage the creation of “opt-in” programs. These programs would allow people to opt out of receiving a telephone book for which they have no use. In an online survey, 81% of respondents said they’d love to participate in such a program. However, many states still require phone companies to provide phone books to all landline subscribers.
Phone books and family trees.
While yellow page and white page production continues to deforest the planet, a British genealogy group is putting old phone books online to help us plot our family trees. The Web site Ancestry.co.uk noted, “Phone books are very useful for pinpointing individuals in a particular place and time. While censuses were only conducted once every 10 years, phone books were published around every one to two years, creating in essence, an almost year-by-year record of individuals’ geographic locations and movements.”
Old revenue streams die hard.
The irony is that the yellow page business is still going great guns. Sure, more and more people are letting their fingers do the walking on a mouse pad, but the various yellow page conglomerates are still actively selling four–color ads to businesses and knocking down plenty of redwoods in the process. In fact, according to an industry group the Yellow Pages Association, approximately 615 million directories were printed last year in the United States alone. These fat, yellow books generated revenues of $13.9 billion. That’s more than $22 in revenue per copy. And, according to the organization, those revenue figures are actually growing.
Not dead yet.
Fewer and fewer people today are relying on the phone book than, say, 10 years ago. But it has not yet reached the tipping point. Current studies indicate six in 10 individuals still use the phone book on a fairly regularly basis.
On the way out.
Bill Gates probably had it right. The end of the telephone book is inevitable. So what can we do in the meantime? Be a good citizen of the planet. Recycle the phone books that are not being used. Some homes have decades of them tucked about the house. If you have an opt-in plan in your area, opt out of the telephone book. This action will help save a tree. Then, go to your computer and bookmark your area yellowpages.com for handy reference on the Web. After all, it’s just a matter of time.
About the Author
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