Calling the Oregon Senate: Will You End Phone Book Waste?

I've been writing a lot to help with a campaign (11,000 signatures and counting) to make San Francisco the first city in the U.S. to end the distribution of unwanted copies of the Yellow Pages.

In the process, I've met a man named Albert Kaufman, of Portland, Oregon, who is the driving force behind similar proposed statewide legislation now being considered in Oregon. He's been asked a good question: "You might ask, why, when there is so much going wrong in the world, have I chosen to focus on phone books?"

His answer? "I learned a while ago that it makes sense to focus on a thread, and keep on pulling, and somewhere along the way, the wastefulness and just downright pain in the ass to deal with of phonebooks got to me."

It's an attitude similar to the motivation of many Change.org members—you've got to start somewhere. Why not the phone book?

Here is a bit more about Mr. Kaufman's journey:

Two years ago, he asked his state legislator to submit a bill on his behalf, HB 3477, to move Oregon to an opt-in system, which would prohibit companies from dumping phone books on doorsteps without explicit permission. The bill made it to a hearing in the House committee and then went nowhere.

But he didn't give up. Last year, he presented the legislation again well in advance of this year's session—this time to his State Senator Chip Shields. Now, the legislation Senate Bill 525 or SB525 awaits a hearing in committee again.

This is where his newly-created Change.org petition comes in. He is pushing the Oregon State Senate to give the bill a hearing and move it out of the committee. He is hoping that the petition letters in support of the bill will help convince members of the committee of the importance and resonance of this issue among constituents. Already, he reports that signers of the petition have heard back from their elected officials about the letter.

Please sign his petition here, especially if you are an Oregon resident. Please also share the petition through your social network and email contacts.

In February, Kaufman wrote: "As you might guess, there's a lot to learn about passing legislation on the State level. And, you hear different suggestions on how to do it effectively from different people. At the same time as this is going on, I'm trying to get letters of support and offers to testify from various environmental groups and YOUR NAME HERE. One big issue in Salem, environmentally-speaking, this session, is an effort to ban the plastic bag, so that's getting a lot of attention, but a few radio, TV stations and newspapers are picking up the story of SB 525 and I expect more will as the session progresses."

This Friday, he has an interview with a local TV station. It looks like his campaign is picking up speed.

The phone book industry is putting plenty of lobbying resources into stalling San Francisco's legislation, because it will be the first in the nation and would cut into their billions of dollars of ineffective advertising revenues. But if enough cities and states are seriously considering similar measures, the industry will have a harder time blocking every individual effort. That's another reason why these local and statewide campaigns are so important.

Support ending the old-school waste of the phone book in Oregon and sign the petition.

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