How sad to get a new phonebook and with it, the “mini-me” version of the yellow pages. How many trees died for this needless second copy of what’s already in the big phone book? They say it’s more convenient because”it’s not as heavy as the big book and you can keep it it your car” (!?) Uh-huh. I might not lift weights, but I can handle lifting up the phone book if it will save some of our trees.
—Basia
This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2009.


tress are treated like a slow growing crop these days you ignorate tree hugging hippie. Most paper ( unless from china ) is made from trees grown from sustainable sources.
read a little on the source of paper these days and come back to the table with a valid argument and then we are talkin!
I think the only reason you object to this paper use is because its for corporate use. Do you know how much paper the latest harry potter or twlight book used up?
no thoughts on that? the paper used in those books come from trees that are just as ahem, “dead” as the trees used for the phone books.?
keep on raging against the machine dude!
I think I may have my own little internet crush on you, lovinglife.
I like the idea of a little yellow pages you can keep in your car. Anyone who’s ever had to call certain cell phone carrier’s directory assistance knows it’s a pain in the ass and their operators don’t know their asses from their heads. I like the idea of not having to be ass raped with fees and minute usage when they’re just going to fuck it up anyway. I’ve spent more time calling their CS line and getting the charges reversed than I have getting the actual numbers!!!
Who even uses the phone book anymore, except to beat someone with?
I knew you’d come around 😉
Holy shit. Have you ever worked in an office, school, restaurant or… hell any business in general. Do you realize how much paper is used/wasted EVERYDAY, stop sitting around worrying about the tiny little yellow pages booklet. My Word.
i believe phonebooks are made from recycled paper
i was surprised phone books were still around!
I’m with lukin77, both the white pages and yellow pages are printed with 100% recyclable stock, and printed with vegetable-based inks and dyes. It’s about as Earth-friendly as it goes.
and doesn’t the phone company collect the old books at the end of the year? I mean not EVERYONE puts their books out, but I’m assuming they can use the old books they DO collect to recycle into the new books.
Also, lovinglife: how you doin’? LOL
Hey, I look forward to my yearly supply of bum wipes. If you crumple the yellow pages long enough, they’re as soft as a bunny’s tail.
“Arborcide”? Surely you jest. What’s next Bovinecide, Ovinecide, Poultrycide. Maybe even Sealicide. OP Everything you own, live in, eat, etc, has died. At least my steak had four legs and had a chence to get away. Tell that to the carrot you ate today.
I like rippin em in half.
really all I use them for since I have unlimited browsing on my phone plan. yellowpages.ca tells me everything I need to know and if I can’t get a signal, well then I can’t call anyone either so no biggie.
If you interlace the pages of 2 phonebooks, they’re practically impossible to pull apart. It took the mythbusters two military tanks to do it.
So… you want a PDF file of the phone book? Not a terrible idea…
Canada 411 is a great website. I haven’t used the phone book in forever.Doesn’t kill any trees either!
Tree’s are farmed these days. planted, cut down re-planted. do the reaserch. and while your at it, check out the facts on carbon emissions as well. Carbon is a neglible gas in the atmosphere.
21% OXYGEN (O2)
78% NITROGEN (N2)
0.04% CARBON DIOXIDE (CO2)
~0.9% ARGON (Ar)
what does that mean? it means carbon is not in any great abundance and never will be.
So what is my carbon foot print?
“So what is my carbon foot print?”
Isn’t that the residue left after walking through ashes?
Rafiki, 0.04% = 750 BILLION tons of carbon in as CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s not a negligible number. Also, the %CO2 and other greenhouse gases are in a balance able to support life. Tipping that balance can dramatically affect climate and the ability of the planet to support life.
Compton’s Encyclopedia. Chicago: Compton’s, 1996: 217. “Estimated to be some 5.5 quadrillion (55 followed by 14 zeros) tons (4.99 quadrillion metric tons)”
weight of earths atmosphere is 55,000,000,000,000,000.00 tons. (550 trillion tons)
you said. carbon in the atmosphere as CO2 (sic) weights 750,000,000,000 ( 75 billion tons)
that puts the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at less than 0.005% which is not true.
there is more than 750 billion tons of CO2 up there I would hope.
Cabon actually is resposible for building our atmosphere. rather than listen blindly to what you here on Televisin from alarmists you should read about carbon. Sure, the increase in human carbon output scence the the industrial revolution may have a small impact on the immediate tempurature. It wont be lasting, or enough to make a differance. Carbon levels fluctuate. During an ice age it is suspected that the carbon levels drop dramatically. When they rise we experiance nothing dramatic. a slight rise in tmepurature. This rise in tmpurature is quite natural.
First heres the composition of air on earth. first number is volume. second is % by weight
Nitrogen 78.08 75.47
780805 N2 28.01
Oxygen 20.95 23.20 209450 O2 32.00
Argon 0.93 1.28 9340 Ar 39.95
Carbon Dioxide 0.038 0.0590 380 CO2 44.01
Neon 0.0018
0.0012
18.21 Ne 20.18
Helium 0.0005
0.00007
5.24 He 4.00
Krypton 0.0001
0.0003
1.14 Kr 83.80
Hydrogen 0.00005
Negligible 0.50 H2 2.02
Xenon 8.7 x 10-6
0.00004
0.087 Xe 131.30
notice that hydrogen is very low in composition, but abundent enouf to rain down from the sky. as water.
I think the 0.04% number is % volume, not % weight. Quotes are from the same website:
“CO2, a gas which now makes up about 0.03 to 0.04 percent by volume of air,”
“The atmosphere contains about 750 billion tons of carbon in the form of CO2. “
link: http://telstar.ote.cmu.edu/environ/m3/s4/c…
My point was not to debate the actual amount of carbon in the atmosphere anyway. It was to point out that a small percentage can be a very big number, which you seem to be making as well.
I take it your real argument here is that Global warming is either not man-made or not a real problem. I think it is important to discuss the issue rationally, but you can’t deny that the climate is changing and that those changes are affecting people’s lives in very significant ways (floods, droughts, hurricanes, northwest passage and arctic oil debates, etc). IF people are responsible for the changes, we should know that. If we are not, we should know that too. The only way to be certain is to study it and if there is something we can change, we should change it.
good points miles. Floods droughts hurricanes, none of this is new and can be attributed direcly to climate change. The most powerful hurricane on record in the united states occured in 1969,
HURRICANE CAMILLE – August 17, 1969.
WINDS: 190 mph
PRESSURE: 909 Mb./26.84 inches.
STORM – SURGE: 22 – 25 feet above Mean Tide.
This hurricane occured forty years ago. You can hardly say hurricanes have increased in size or frequency due to Carbon emissions or pollution. In fact people have not been recording hurricane data long enough to be able to say anything about trends. As for flooding, The worst evidence of flooding pre dates the climate change debate by almost 3000 years. 1400-1800 B.C. france experianced extreme flooding far exceeding anything seen in recent years.
Yes climate change is effecting the globe. If you go up to Nunivuit you can see that the Ice shelf has receeded by a few meters each year. The glacier on kilimonjaro in africa has melted and is gone. there is an obvious warking occuring. This warming may be the result of the depletion of the Ozone layer by CFC pollution. The natural warming of the earth due to an anual shift in orbit, an anual flare up on the sun increasing its uv rays, What ever the case may be Carbon emissions are not the culprit. Carbon in our atmosphere is chemically negligible.
The Whole premise of reducing carbon emissions is Idiotic. There is worse crap humanity is pumping into the atmosphere than carbon emissions. The whole carbon Foot print issue is distractive from the real environmental concerns. A shift from band aid strategies now to more pressing concerns is what is needed. Water protection, soil erosion and real air pollution (UV dangers from Halogen build up in the stratosphere.)
I’m still waiting to be able to go to Lawrencetown beach in January and get a suntan while sipping a mai-tai under the palm trees.
Much respect to Miles and Rafiki for the quality posts. And thanks for not ripping each other apart in a frenzy to discredit the other. :). I enjoyed reading.
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what was this bitch about again?
Oh yes, phone books. I wont bitch about useful items – but, I will agree with the comment someone posted about wasted paper in schools and businesses. Although its not all bad – we now print on both sides of paper and recycle all of (well, most) of the excess.
Wikipedia has a pretty cool page on paper recycling – if anyone cares. Its relatively efficient, so lets bitch about regular recycling – or inefficient paper recycling. But not about things that have a use.
Phone books are a useful commodity, and losing them would be about as upsetting as losing newspapers – HOWEVER, anybody heard of bloody whitepages.ca?! For christs sake, its a helluva lot easier. I hear ya OP.
Oh, Pee Ess – this brings in the argument of the actual IMPORTANCE of printed items when you can use the interwebs. C’mon – who doesn’t have a computer these days…
Quite a few people don’t have computers and not everyone walks down the street with their laptops. Phone books are very useful and the paper is recycled paper. Just because something is on the internet, doesn’t mean it’s accurate. Not to mention the people that are needed to produce them and their gainful emplyment.