"Happy Holidays from Hawaiian Tel"

The 2009 Yellow Pages are soon to hit our doorsteps and just in case we don’t notice the hulking thing, Hawaiian Tel is running an ad campaign to remind us to look for it. Their message: “Happy Holidays from Hawaiian Tel” which is ironic because like the proverbial fruitcake which we get regardless of whether we want it, many of the Yellow Pages delivered also will be trashed. Why? 1) You can get your numbers on the internet now. And the numbers available online are generally more up to date. 2) The Yellow Pages comes out so damn often, some people don’t see the need for a new one when they come out. This is the complaint that has been made by some curmudgeonly individuals in my building anyway.

I myself use the Yellow Pages. My computer is not always on and sometimes looking it up by hand is actually faster. But issuing the monstrosities several times a year, as Hawaiian Tel does, is out of control.

There is a growing movement towards reducing Yellow Pages waste. According to Yellow Pages Goes Green, a great resource on this issue, some “local governments are looking to establish an ordinance of $5 per book to the telephone companies for the delivery of unwanted books that end up in the trash and take up valuable landfills.” This is an idea legislators in Hawaii may want to take a look at—it would be bringing in money for the state, but who in the heck would be able to keep track of which books are wanted and unwanted? I don't know, but we need to do something.