Phone Books

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has a program to reduce and recycle phone books. It offers suggestions to reduce the numbers of phone books that you receive from various vendors and gives recycling suggestions.

They also provide a link to the Phone Book Project, an initiative by the Product Stewardship Institute (PSI). The PSI worked with various phone book companies, recyclers and local governments to develop a voluntary pledge for phone book distributors, that includes:

- Opt-out (subscribers can request NOT to get the phone book).
- Environmental production components (e.g., use of recycled content, soy inks, etc.).
- Recycling best practices.

According to Oregon DEQ, only 20% of phone books are recycled on a national scale. By making this information regarding phone book recycling and opt-out policy more public, the amount of phone book waste can be greatly reduced.



Phone Book Project
Oregon DEQ - Phonebooks