Discarded Telephone Books Clog Dumps

(Ridgway) Mounds of local telephone books, thrown away daily by postal recipients, have shut down the local landfill here. The books, which began flooding the market some ten years ago, now amount to 40% of the trash discarded by postal employees at the end of each working day.

The actual number of phone books published is estimated to be nearing 50 which computes to over 2500 sources of phone listings per capita. They come in all sorts of designs and colors, featuring combinations of communities who rarely call each other.

“Why can’t we just have one phone book?” asked a town councilperson here. “Wouldn’t that be enough?”

It is hoped that the landfill will be cleared and back open for dumping by the weekend. At present a line of semis, estimated to be 1/2 mile long, sits idle outside the Ridgway facility waiting to dispose of its pulp cargo. Persons attempting to dump other forms of debris have been turned away. The situation is no better in San Miguel and Montrose Counties where the books have once again out-muscled other trash for a place in the sun.

“Last winter people stopped buying firewood due to easy access to phone books,” said one postal employee. “They went out of here like box elder bugs in a lightening storm! Now the landfills are crammed full of chucked chain saws and scrapped log splitters.”

Publishers of the phone books defend their position saying that they had promised blanket circulation and did not want to short summer residents or visitors who might like to take home a souvenir. They say controls placed on press runs would jeopardize their right to make a living.

“Maybe we’ve reached a point of overkill,” said one account executive at Tele-Phoney Inc., appealing to the American sense of greed, “but there’s easy money in all that advertising.”

Consumer groups contend that the generic, specialized books are not large quite enough to benefit shorter Americans in bellying up the dinner table or to serve as a viable challenge to traditional side-show strongmen intent on tearing them up to exhibit their might.

None of the assorted producers cared comment when asked what happened to all the phone booths that used to grace the countryside. The booths, almost always void of phone books, have gradually disappeared in the face of the cell phone explosion of recent years.

“We’re responding to the needs of Americans who must talk on the phone all the time. It’s a security thing,” said the Tele-Phoney source. “What if their friends and relatives grow tired of chatting and they must turn to strangers for this anal form of communication. Who’ll pay the piper then, huh?” he puffed up.

Authorities all over the state have concluded that in the future the unwanted books should be discarded in hazardous waste dumps like the one in Uravan, which, despite the negative input of the local populace some years ago, operates there.

A federal study, completed last spring indicates that pulp used in the books actually neutralizes radioactive waste without the bother of having to bury it.

“Tailings and other atomic side effects are part of our culture,” said the Tele-Phoney man. “We’re just happy to be helping forge a cleaner environment. There can never be too much information for the common man.” – Melvin Toole