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Phone Book Swap Law

Leave a book, take a book
  (+7, -1)
(+7, -1)
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against]

A new law should be passed that when a phone company delivers a new phone book they must be willing on the spot to take away any old phone books you have.

I've spent the day trying to find someone at Ameritech that knows where the phone book recycling is. The first time they told me to look in the cover of my new directory (where there is absolutely nothing about recycling), the second time they gave me the number of the center for ordering MORE phone books, and the third time they gave me a phone number that was disconnected. It should NOT be this hard to recycle a friggin' phone book!

(Hopefully my first paragraph has enough merit that the second paragraph won't cause this to be MFD as a rant!)

mwburden, Dec 17 2001

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       Tried that last year. The took the newspapers and left the phone books. Grrrr!   

       (Maybe if I bury them deeper so that they can't be easily separated... but I don't want to do it if the binding on the phone book keeps the recycling center from being able to process it with the newspapers.)
mwburden, Dec 17 2001
  

       The first couple of years phone book recycling was available they offered prizes for the person turning in the most phone books. Now, my experience is like mwb's. Did the first years' efforts demonstrate that phone book recycling is not cost-effective?
beauxeault, Dec 17 2001
  

       I just checked my phone book to see if this were feasible. In Grand Rapids, MI, you could finish by August 12th if you only did the white pages. The yellow pages would take 3 1/4 years to do just by itself...
mwburden, Dec 17 2001
  

       Have a phonebook bonfire.
Use the pages to light your fireplace or stove.
Trim as needed to shore up a wobbly chair.
Bind them with adhesive and make phonebook furniture or an igloo.
  

       (doublecheck to make sure I didn't spell phone as phoen - which I am known to do)
phoenix, Dec 17 2001
  

       [phoenix] Sorry, bonfires are against the law within city limits unless you get a permit. Don't have a fireplace or wood stove. Don't have NEARLY enough wobbly chairs to use THAT MANY phone books!   

       I'll have to look into that igloo idea...
mwburden, Dec 17 2001
  

       ¯ravenswood: I believe I've read the same statements, and I've failed trying to find the source of the arguments. There are some convincing ecological reasons mentioned for 'scrapping' the present recycling programs … the cost effectiveness you mentioned, as well as recycling's costs in excess waste water used and higher levels of contaminants arriving in our hands via recyclead goods.   

       If you had a big crimping iron you could shape the pages into corrugations that would qualify as corrugated packaging.
reensure, Dec 17 2001
  

       Just last night I was talking to a policeman who informed me that phone books are the preferred choice of bludgeoning weapon for violent coppers to use upon prisoners because they don't leave visible marks. So you could try selling your phonebook to the police.   

       As far as paper recycling goes, I seem to remember hearing that the cleaning/ink removal process results in a highly toxic waste effluent which can be expensive and difficult to deal with.
stupop, Dec 18 2001
  

       I think Rods Tiger's suggestion is another project we could consider submitting for the 2003 Turner Prize.   

       And the Ice Hotel started as one man's Igloo-building hobby, so maybe an igloo of phonebooks could evolve into the world's only phonebook hotel.
beauxeault, Dec 18 2001
  

       I tried it, Rods. Now I have a directory's weight of slips of paper bearing my number, and the envelopes they all came in. Waiting for further instructions.
neelandan, Dec 21 2001
  

       Yeah. Never understood why it was more expensive to not print my name and number.
phoenix, Dec 21 2001
  

       If you bake a phone book for about an hour at 300 degrees F, they can be ripped in half (after you carefully break the binding).   

       Perhaps you should keep a few around to impress friends with your incredible strength.
RobGraham, Dec 21 2001
  

       It's actually possible to tear a normal phone book in half...Angle the edge so you have a thin place to start, and work it back and forth, working into the thicker part...   

       You can also easily tear them vertically, open the book about halfway and tear the binding.
StarChaser, Dec 22 2001
  

       oooh Star you are so manly.....
po, Dec 22 2001
  

       I'm all pumped up from tearing my phone book...
RobGraham, Dec 23 2001
  

       <grins and poses>
StarChaser, Dec 23 2001
  

       The solution is actually quite simple, it's just that you have to be over 70 years old. Upon receiving your new phone book just pack up your old one, drive out to your grandkid's and deliver it to them saying "Here, thought you kids might need one of these things...we've also got a couple from (city miles away you never call to) that we'll bring over next week"
Graciem, Dec 24 2001
  

       Hey, I need hundreds of phone books for some school assemblies that I'm preparing for. We tear them during the assembly and I need old phone books. They get recycled afterwards, so if you would like an address to send me your phone book email me @ onebadsticboy@yahoo.com and I will gladly take them. We use them for illistrated messages to promote everything from anti violence to dreams to morality and ethics and many more topics. :) one man's junk is another man's treasure...
onebadsticboy, Sep 28 2003
  

       One efficient solutioj would be to onloy supply phone books to those who ask for them. Everyone reading thi scan look up a number on a web page far faster than finding the phone book. I haven't used a phone book in a decade, yet they still deliver three or four of them every year to my house.
mje, Oct 28 2003
  

       Good idea, but since the Yellow Pages is a paid advertising medium, I doubt it will happen. (Letting people opt out would cut into the demographics they can quote to advertisers, hence the rates they can charge).
krelnik, Oct 28 2003
  
      
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