08/01/2013 - Permalink

Reminder to recycle old Yellow Pages

Related topics: Community

Shropshire residents are being asked to recycle their old Yellow Pages, now that the new ones have been delivered.

Yellow Pages and all other types of telephone directory, such as those produced by BT and Thomson, can simply be placed in kerbside recycling boxes along with newspapers and magazines for collection, or if you prefer they can be taken to one of the 100 local paper recycling banks we provide around the county.

With each directory weighing around 1.7kg, this means more than 200 tonnes of waste paper will be generated this year just by old Yellow Pages in Shropshire alone.  All Yellow Pages are collected along with the rest of your paper, and sent to Shotton Paper Mill near Chester.  Here the paper gets pulped down to make newspaper print.

Donald Macphail, Regional Director of Veolia with responsibility for the Shropshire area, said:-

“Recycling Yellow Pages is simple – just put them in your paper recycling box and then place it on the kerbside for collection.  Please remove the plastic wrapper first, if you’re recycling new ones.  All paper will be collected by Veolia and taken for recycling at the local paper mill.”

Mike Owen, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member with responsibility for waste and recycling, said:

“Recycling a tonne of paper saves around 3,500 kWh – so if we could recycle all of Shropshire’s Yellow Pages this year, we could save enough energy to power almost 200 local homes for the year.  But as well as reducing our carbon emissions and reducing waste to landfill, I think it’s really important that by supplying our local paper mill just up the road we are supporting local jobs and sustaining a UK paper manufacturing industry.”

It’s fantastic to recycle waste paper but it’s even better for the environment to avoid waste in the first place.  If you want you can opt out of delivery of phone books completely, and use the web and telephone-based services instead; simply contact the companies and ask to be removed from their distribution lists.  For more information visit www.saynotophonebooks.org.