You know that house down the street with that pile of phone books by the front porch? That stack of Yellow Pages slowly decaying into a damp, nasty hillock, becoming a cozy habitat for who-knows-how-many creepy-crawlies? Well, it’s got more consequences than just being gross.
It will come as a shock to no one that the continued production of giant paper books filled with information that you can find in two seconds on the internet is wasteful, but perhaps you were not aware of quite how wasteful.
Less than half of a phone book being made from recycled paper and less than half of phone books ending up recycled is straight up bad. And over 4.5 million trees being cut down every year to make phone books is painful, but it’s not all depressing! The resources mentioned in the infographic – catalogchoice.org and yellowpagesoptout.com give you the option to opt out of phone book and junk mail delivery.
Once you’ve gone and opted-out of all that junk mail, reward yourself with this infographic of trees that have survived the ravages of time and humanity for thousands and thousands of years.