Did you know that an estimated 5 million trees are cut down each year to create white pages phone books?
According to a recent survey conducted with Harris Interactive, only 22% of recipients recycle when disposing of them, which explains why approximately 165,000 tons of waste end up in landfills. In addition, a survey whitepages.com shows that almost 75% of consumers are completely unaware of the environmental and financial impact in printing, delivering and recycling these books. Given that you likely use online directories, social networks and mobile phone applications to find the contact information you need, it simply does not make sense to have the white pages phone books forcefully delivered to us every year.
This infographic, called “Death Becomes the Phone Book,” comes from the people at whitepages.com a group which is behind the Ban the Phone Book campaign to support telephone companies and consumers who want to curb unsolicited (and unnecessary) printing and delivering of white pages phone books. While it only focuses on the USA, it highlights the environmental impact of phone books which is a problem that affects almost every country in the world. Can the world move towards a paperless future?
Image © Tim Welch
