Recycle Phonebooks
It’s phonebook season again. The shinny new directories are being delivered and we can finally toss that doodle filled, ripped-up phone book that has seen better days. But where does it go?
Phonebooks are recyclable. Not as easy as regular newspaper but they are recyclable. Directories are not considered valuable to the recycler due to the fact that the fibres are so short. The short fibres make reuse difficult for the manufacture of new paper products. But when adding the right mixture of wood fibres and glue, new paper products are possible.
But with all that, recycling does prevail as the responsible means of disposal. Old phone books can be placed in the curbside yellow bag. They can also be dropped off at any recycling bin that is labelled Mixed Paper.
Keep your eyes and ears open for a special fundraising phonebook collection drive by a school or sports team. This fundraiser used to be a good way of helping the community and the environment as monies were given to the collection group from the Directory Companies. Times have changed and over the last few years money incentives to recycle that phone book have been harder to find.
Nonetheless, you can still recycle that book.
By recycling a phonebook, the fibres go towards the manufacture of new phone books. I came across some interesting stats that may just entice you to recycle that old directory. For every 500 books recycled, we save:
7,000 gallons of water
3.3 cubic yards of landfill space
17 to 31 trees
4,100 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power an average home for six months