If someone could stop us from getting spammed with phone books on a quarterly basis, I would be very intersted.

Reducing the size of large printed words a letter or two at a time is the next logcal step in sustanbility.

I don't care for the once a week free Oregonian food flyer thrown on our steps, but it does keep a person employed. I don't have the heart to tell him "I don't care for your dumping trash on my porch." For me it's not about being "green" so much as not having to deal with junk paper.

That person could be even better employed by going around every Thursday and collecting the FoodDay papers that were not picked up.

If The Oregonian did this for a month, it might find out the free food rag is a total waste of both paper and money. The money they save could be put to hiring back Margie Boule and some reporters.

Ahh, the phone book. A relic of a past era. That book is bigger than the computer that everyone uses to find that information about a million times faster now.

It's so big that even if I did want to bring that thing into my house, I wouldn't have anywhere to put it. It doesn't fit in a drawer. It takes too much table or counter space. It's unwieldy to use. It could cause personal injury if dropped.

Yes, people say that phone books are highly recyclable. However, they are also 100% useless. The time and energy that goes into creating that slab of dead tree is largely wasted. Right about now, TV Guide is laughing at the yellow pages for being useless.

But thank God they put every one of them in those un-recyclable plastic bags, because we sure wouldn't want them getting wet while they lay on the porch for months until they get dropped through the bottom of your recycling super-tanker.

Phone books suck.

I was just talking with my Superpages Rep (formerly the Verizon book) and she claims that over 80% of people still use the book itself. I think she's out of her mind. I haven't personally used on in over 5 years, maybe more. Online suffices. If I see them delivering it I tell them to keep it, otherwise it winds up in the recycling bin for pickup that week. What a waste of resources. There should be an opt out list for these things.

We get about six big phone books dumped on our property each year, nicely wrapped in a plastic bag. The nice thing is that you can now dump the books into your recycling bin, whereas it used to be that you had to find a place that would accept the damn things.

If I wanted one, I'd order one. Hot-button issue for me. Portland is America's "greenest" city? My green fanny.

Back when I was growing up, these would have been a welcome addition to any outhouse.

Not any more.

If The Oregonian did this for a month, it might find out the free food rag is a total waste of both paper and money.

Ah, but then the advertisers would know this as well. I think they would rather remain ignorant and claim that their their readership numbers from the golden pre-web era are still valid.

I guess I'm an anachronism: I use my yellow pages, I often refer to my parks bureau schedule, and I read Food Day.

Good call on the typos. We will fix that in the future.

Thanks for acknowledging the bureau's sustainability practices. We have received a very positive response from the public.

Nick Fish