A three foot stack of newsprint is one tree.
Rose, Nov 19th, 2008 at TechDirt:
I manage a branch of a small, family-owned jewelry company. We pay thousands of dollars each year for our tiny listing in the Yellow Pages, just one of the several publishing companies that distribute phone books. Literally, thousands of dollars.
We were recently discussing our advertising budget and we talked about what a waste that money was. We’ve been tracking our results for a while now and we’ve found that the newspaper and the Internet are our two biggest draws, with the radio being a close third.
Our television ads were horrendously expensive and useless, and the only phone book related business we get is people calling us on the notion that we’re a different local business with a similar name.
We’ve decided not to renew out contracts. This is a very old, established company owned by people who are not computer or Internet savvy. One of them can answer their cell phone and the other can sort of check their e-mail. So even the people who I most thought would not like change recognize the uselessness of the phone book.
Mass distribution of unused paper. Silly.