Firm to Swap Trees for Phone Books

First they turned trees into phone books. Now United Yellow Pages wants residents to turn in old phone books for trees.

This Friday and Saturday, any old phone books can be exchanged in Santa Monica for an 18-inch pine tree seedling and instructions on how to plant it, said Janet Bridgers, a United Yellow Pages spokeswoman.

The company will recycle the phone books and in the process save some valuable trees, she said.

Offering tree seedlings “seemed to be the best way to remind people that paper is really trees,” she said, adding that it also gives people incentive to recycle a product that usually has no redemption value.

2 1/2 Tons Collected

The knob cone Monterey pine seedlings will eventually grow into trees 80 to 100 feet tall, although it will take about 30 years for them to reach that height, Bridgers said.

This will be the second year United Yellow Pages has sponsored the tree-seedling exchange.

Last year, the company collected 2 1/2 tons of phone books, about 1,500 phone books, she said. “Everybody thinks it’s a good idea,” she said. “For some reason, people seem to realize that throwing out a phone book is a waste.”

Recycling a 4-foot-tall stack of phone books will save a tree that is 35 feet high and 10 to 15 year old, she said.

The seedling exchange campaign fits in well with Santa Monica’s strategy of providing as many recycling opportunities to businesses and residents as possible, said Deborah Baine, recycling coordinator for the city, which is co-sponsoring the campaign.

A phone book is “another item that is recyclable and will be removed from the waste stream that would just go to a landfill and would go to waste,” Baine said.

Two Locations

“Recycling them would also preserve resources that would otherwise be used needlessly,” she said.

Phone books will be exchanged for tree seedlings at two locations this weekend:

On Friday at the front steps of Santa Monica City Hall, 1685 Main St. from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

And Saturday at the Santa Monica Recycling Center, 2411 Delaware Ave., east of Cloverfield Boulevard near Michigan Avenue, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

The campaign is also sponsored by Ecolo-Hau, Inc., the recycling contractor for Santa Monica, and Earth Alert!, a nonprofit environmental group.