Update on phone book delivery

Periodically since I posted Stop it with the phone books! in January, I’ve contacted Dan Saltzman’s office to ask for progress reports. Commissioner Saltzman is in charge of the Office of Sustainable Development, and of Cable and Franchise Management (don’t bother clicking on that last link, there’s nothing on the page with that title on the Commissioner’s web site – I just included it because that’s what I do). Having both the phone service suppliers and the waste management franchises in his portfolio, he should be exactly the right person to deal with the issue of phone companies sending unwanted books that then need to be immediately recycled. His excellent Chief of Staff, Brendan Finn, has always responded to my queries promptly, but on the lines of, “we’re working on it”. Yesterday, replying to my August inquiry, some more details from various staff members:

* Staff contacted the Product Stewardship Institute earlier this spring and found there aren’t good examples of local laws restricting phone book distribution. Two state legislatures (New Mexico and North Carolina) proposed regulations, but both of those bills failed to pass this session.

* According to the administrative rules from the Oregon Public Utilities Commission (OPUC) (OAR 860-021-0010), a phone company must distribute phone books to consumers annually. Staff believes Portland might run into state legal issues if we try to add laws pertaining to phonebooks.

* They suggest calls or concerns about sustainability issues in connection with the distribution of telephone directories should be addressed to the OPUC, since staff reads the Oregon Administrative Rule in OAR 860-021-0010 titled “Information for Utility Customers and Applicants” as requiring that large telephone companies must furnish a telephone directory to all customers annually. They believe the phone companies would perhaps be perfectly happy to be relieved of the expense (and note that in fact many have “spun off” their phone book business to separate subsidiaries, as Qwest has spun theirs off to “Dex”), however in their view the distribution of phone books is also designed to satisfy the phone companies “public notice” requirements regarding complaints, emergencies, how to contact them, how to arrange service and repair calls, etc.

* Staff members feel the phone book remains a very basic tool, the critical “hard copy” in every household for this kind of emergency and customer service information. They say that maybe the “digitally empowered” don’t use phone books much anymore, however a lot of poor, senior and low income people still do, and still depend on their telephone directories. And, that the City participated in the “Blue Pages” proceeding in recent years, to require that phone books retain their “Blue Pages” listing of government and public service contact information – police, fire, ambulance, poison control, etc. They note the web is not very satisfactory when the electricity is out and the waters rise, however the phone book will be there regardless.

* Staff notes there are longstanding recycling programs in place and accessible in Portland for every phone book distributed here (whether the book is wanted or not). So, if someone doesn’t want it, staff suggests either they need to contact their phone company and “opt out” or else they need to do what everyone else does: recycle.

My response:

1. First, thanks to staff for researching and responding to my questions.

2. OAR 860-021-010 doesn’t require phone companies to distribute a phone book annually. It requires them to “give its residential customers a written summary of their rights and responsibilities”, “When service is initiated and not less than once each year thereafter”, and says large companies “satisfy the annual notification requirement by prominent publication of the information in a telephone directory distributed to their customers annually.” It doesn’t say they have to satisfy it that way.

3. Since the emergency information rarely changes, and in any case is a fraction of the two volume phone book, it would seem reasonable for Portland to require companies to give customers the option of receiving the annual rights and responsibilities statement in a separate small letter. That letter could include stickers with the emergency and non-emergency public safety numbers, for placement on land line phones – thereby better meeting both the need for emergency contact information and desire to reduce paper waste. It sounds to me like the City is using the phone book delivery as a vehicle to get the Blue Pages information out, not factoring in that the Blue Pages are 27 sides of paper while my company’s White and Yellow total 1,831 sides. Not very efficient, if the Blue Pages are what people really need.

4. If Commissioner Saltzman decides that the bottom line is that irate customers not wanting phone books should contact the OPUC, then their phone number should be on the delivery bags.

5. Currently enormous volumes of paper in phone books go right from the driveway to the recycling bin, in many Portland households. That’s a huge waste of resources in creating and delivering the books, then collecting and recycling them. And it’s an even bigger problem in apartments, where managers are sometimes left with dozens of unwanted books, and have to pay to recycle them or haul them to a collection center personally. There must be a way to reduce this waste.

I don’t object so much to the company I contract with leaving one set of phone books – I can find their number easily on my bill, and tell them not to. I don’t want companies I don’t subscribe to leaving their books. Surely the requirement to deliver to “customers”, even if real, doesn’t include homes where there is no subscriber/customer of that particular phone company? I don’t see why I should have to go to the trouble of contacting the two or three other companies that leave their books in my driveway, other than my own service provider.

And when my company leaves two sets of books, as they often do because we live on a corner and the distributor leaves one on each frontage, I want to have the number to call to have them picked up again right on the bag, rather than having to search for it. Since the distributing company is often different from the phone service provider, it’s difficult or impossible to find the right number to call. I asked Commissioner Saltzman’s office to please let me know if Portland can at least require a Return phone number to be printed on the delivery bags.

I’ll keep you posted when there is further news.