Creating a better future

A carbon neutral Yellow Pages, is it really helpful?

Hi,

One of the more irritating things I see is the piles of unused Yellow and White pages that accumulate around my suburb. In
blocks of home units, up to half are never collected by residents, and
sit in sad, sodden piles near the letter boxes.

So I noticed with interest that Sensis have been accredited as carbon neutral for their
YellowPages product: http://about.sensis.com.au/sustainability/environment/our-commitmen....
One good aspect is that you can opt out from receivng this, http://about.sensis.com.au/sustainability/environment/choosing-not-....

It got me thinking about the meaning of 'Carbon Neutral'. I guess it is
not hard to achieve if you buy enough offsets. Yet this product relies on
consuming huge quantities of paper and distributing them to almost
every household in Australia, regardless of the actual demand or
usefulness of the product to the consumer.

I know that Sensis revenues are down for this product, you can see the books getting
thinner each year. And they also have a good online offering. So ideally
it is something that will phase out over time. For me, if carbon
neutral was to have more credibility, a product like this should move
away from push marketing (you get it unelss you actively unsubscribe) to
pull marketing where only the people who really want it end up
receiving it. Same applies to local newpapers. But I am not sure if this
can ever happen while advertising rates are based mostly on
circulation, even though readership is usually a small fraction of this number.

Tags: carbon, neutral

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Permalink Reply by Lee Stewart on July 14, 2010 at 5:41pm

I agree and it is really annoying to get those weekly news papers and yellow pages when I never use them. Even worse our weekly newspaper is thrown on the front lawn and is usually soggy by the time I pick it up. Or even worse they now wrap it in plastic so I have to upwrap it to recycle it.

Thanks for the link I will opt out of the YellowPages. Please let me know if you find a way of opting out of thsoe weekly newspapers.

Cheers
Lee

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Permalink Reply by Kim Ryan on January 2, 2011 at 8:12am

I did ring up Sensis and ask for the directory deliveries to be cancelled about 6 months ago, but a new Yellow Pages still arrived a few weeks back! I noticed a new opt out service here, hopefully this one will work: https://www.directoryselect.com.au/ds/

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Permalink Reply by Rajkumar R on February 18, 2011 at 10:43am

I called them last year to offer free consultation to assess the number they would need to distribute and was flatly turned down. I did a survey of the White Pages last year in my neighbourhood and about 70% were thrown into the recycle bin without being touched! This year with the Yellow Pages my apartment block received more books than there were apartments so I don't think opting out is a solution.

There is a great system in Singapore that I would love seen implemented here but I don't know how I can push them to do so.

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Permalink Reply by Kim Ryan on February 22, 2011 at 1:55pm

This seems to be a new service, and if you keep getting deliveries you can notify them through a sparate channel to stop it. So I think it is worth trying, but agree for blocks of flats the deliverers will mostly just dump a big pile near the front door.

An intersting survey here http://www.yellowturningblue.com.au/ but very self serving as initiated by a competitor

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Permalink Reply by Kim Ryan on February 24, 2011 at 7:18am

Thus story is getting a bit of a run at SMH now http://www.smh.com.au/executive-style/management/blogs/management-l... . You are right Rajkumar, if you live in an apartment block you can't opt out unless the entire block agrees!

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Permalink Reply by Rajkumar R on February 24, 2011 at 8:31am

Good article Kim. I would love to do a survey to see how many people still use the yellow and white pages - the government really should step in to stop a total waste of resources.