Recycle your Yellow Pages

Shropshire residents are being asked to recycle their old Yellow Pages, now that the new one has been delivered. Yellow Pages and all types of telephone directory can simply be placed in your kerbside recycling boxes along with your newspapers and magazines for collection, or taken to a paper recycling bank.

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

Cllr. Mike Owen, cabinet member with responsibility for waste at Shropshire Council said, “recycling Yellow Pages is simple - just put them in your paper recycling box and then put it on the kerbside for collection. The plastic wrapper should be removed first. By recycling Yellow Pages we help support UK manufacturing as well as reducing the amount of waste which goes to landfill and thus protecting the environment."


NB - Across the whole of the UK more than 75 million phone books are left on the doorsteps of UK homes and businesses each year by Yellow Pages, BT and Thomson which results in a staggering 62,000 tonnes of waste paper every year. Recycling a tonne of paper saves around 3500 kWh - enough energy to power an average house for one year. So recycling phone books helps to reduce our carbon emissions as well as helping to reduce waste to landfill.


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 http://www.saynotophonebooks.org/