There are seven phone books at my house. I've piled them up in the kitchen so that they now form a convenient side table. But it's still unsettling. When will phone book companies realize their product is now defunct and wasteful, useless in the age of the internet and cell phones and offensive to people who like trees? This online petition to stop phone book distribution says there are more phone books distributed every year than the entire population of America. Companies like SBC Global and Verizon net up to $3.6 billion annually for chucking the piles of paper at my door. They deliver incessantly, rain or shine, undeterred by foreclosure signs or even this barbed wire fence on SE Alder.

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