More progress on phone books

Brendan Finn, Commissioner Saltzman’s excellent chief-of-staff, sent me the following update on the unwanted phone books issue yesterday – without my even asking again. He reports:

“Portland will be working with a national coalition led by King County (WA) and the National Waste Prevention Coalition in the “Phone Book Project.” Please read the initial draft action plan released this month.” (Word document)

Wow, this is way cool! The report says the Product Stewardship Intitute, Inc., (PSI) has been working on the problem since early in 2006, and will be taking the lead in negotiating with all parties to reach the desired goal of reducing delivery of unwanted phone directories. The timeline is yet to be determined, but still, woo hoo! Action! And coordinated action – at the NATIONAL level! The report covers almost all aspects of the issue, with research and reports from many states.

Brendan continues:

“More information on the project is here. As you can see in this report, even the state Public Utility Commission is unclear if phone companies are required to deliver phone books or not.” (See page 25 of report. I argued in my last post on this topic that the Oregon rules can be followed without mandatory universal delivery, and certainly without delivering to people who aren’t customers of a particular company – AF)

Thank you for finding out and passing along the information, Brendan!

I’m very glad Portland is signing on to this work in progress. In the meantime, it still seems reasonable to me that the City should at least require that companies delivering books clearly print a Return phone number on the delivery bags, so citizens can easily call to have unwanted books picked up again immediately.

From the report : “Telephone books…. represent significant tonnage in the waste stream (660,000 tons per year). In recent years, the number of phone books delivered to households and businesses has increased, with two or more competing companies now publishing and distributing books in similar or overlapping geographic areas. Most residents and businesses lack a way to “opt out” of receiving those they don’t want. In addition, phone book recycling presents challenges. Phone books are made with a low grade of paper, and are sometimes distributed with materials that become contaminants in the recycling process (e.g., magnets and plastics), which represents a problem for certain end-use applications. Local governments currently bear costs to recycle and/or dispose of phone books, and some areas experience limited or absent opportunities to recycle. Regardless of the relative availability of recycling options, source reduction is an environmentally efficient approach that cuts across all scenarios.”

Exactly what we’ve been saying!

The cost of phone book delivery and recycling: The Product Stewardship Intitute estimates that “it costs approximately $75-$100/ton to collect, transport, and dispose (through landfilling or incineration) of telephone directories in the U.S. In addition, the cost to collect, transport, and recycle phone books in the U.S. is approximately $50-75/ton on average.”

“The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (OR DEQ) estimated that 7.2 million telephone directories were distributed in Oregon in 2003, representing an estimated 9,100 tons. OR DEQ’s conclusion from using this methodology is that the number of phone books distributed exceeds the number that would be needed if every household and every employee were to receive one book.“

“There are no federal regulations requiring the distribution of phone books.” That’s a relief. Making progress ought to be marginally easier if we only have to deal with the State of Oregon, or perhaps even just Portland regulations, policies, and practices.

Appendix B of the report is information from Oregon (or not, in the first bullet):

* “The Oregon DEQ conducts an annual survey of telephone directory publishers regarding their use of recycled-content fibers and recycling opportunities. However, data reported in this survey is protected as confidential and exempt from public disclosure under ORS 192.502(3), so cannot be shared here.”

* “The result is an estimated grand total of 7.2 million telephone directories distributed in Oregon. This number may be slightly low; as the estimated 2003 circulation result for one of the larger companies was more than 5% below what that company actually reported to DEQ.”

* “…enough directories were distributed in Oregon to provide 6.45 million people with both yellow and white page listings for some part of Oregon. However, according to the U.S. Census, there were only 1.33 million households in Oregon in 2000. Further, there were also 1.33 million people working in private, non-farm employment. Thus, if every household received one phone book (or set of YP/WP) and one additional phone book (or set) were provided for every person working in the private, non-farm sector (including every pizza delivery person, surgical nurse, assembly line worker, etc.) only 2.66 million directories would be needed. Clearly, the number of directories distributed exceeds this number.”

HA! Intuitively and anecdotally, we figured we’re getting too many books. Now we have the numbers to prove it.

I’m excited Portland is joining this project, which started in early 2006 with a push from King County, Washington. I appreciate Brendan Finn of Commissioner Saltzman’s office, and staff in the Office of Sustainable Development, investigating and following up on this issue. It may seem minor, but the study shows it’s a nationwide problem with significant cumulative impacts.

One final twist: Here is a website for a product Qwest offers that sells our information to “any” telephone directory distributor. WARNING: following that link may raise your blood pressure.