In this day and age phonebooks are surely one of the biggest wastes of resources around… A huge wad of paper full of contacts you could find on the Internet, ferried around in cars and trucks that most people never even look at.

When our last phonebook was delivered I happened to bump into the delivery guy and told him we didn’t want a copy, he informed me that he would just give it to me anyway, to which I shrugged and put it straight into the recycling bin… A complete waste!

I came across a few well organised campaigns against phone books in the USA and UK, mainly all trying to convince the government to make phone books opt in, not opt out.

www.banthephonebook.org for the US
www.saynotophonebooks.com and www.businessgreen.com/business-green/news/2251134/hang-phone-book for the UK

So I wondered what campaigns, actions and options might be happening in Australia..

I found one useful post here that also holds some interesting debates on the issue.

So far I could only find one option, apparently you can ring Sensis (who make most of the main phone books) on 1800 810 211 to opt out (more details can be found here), but that might not even be possible, it seems the only way to actually guarantee not receiving a phone book is to not have a land line…

Well, they’re pretty defunct these days to…