Phone books will one day disappear

We received a new phone book the other day. Actually, It was so small I mistook it for an advertisement and barely stopped myself from pitching it straight into the recycling bin.
I remember when phone books were thick enough to be used as booster seats for small children. They were even thicker than the obsolete Sears catalog. But times are changing. If the trend continues, next year we may get a phone pamphlet.
I understand that phone books are not as well-used as they were in the past. I, and most people I know, tend to look things up on the Internet instead of leafing through a dog-eared collection of personal and business phone numbers. Sometimes this is because we can’t find the actual book, sometimes it is a matter of convenience as the Internet contains more than just local numbers. Gone are the days when we could call a toll-free number for a listing of an out-of-town friend or business.
The first telephone directory appeared a few years after the invention of the telephone. It couldn’t be properly referred to as a phone book as it was a single page and contained the numbers for 50 people and businesses in New Haven, Connecticut. As the popularity of telephones increased, so did the size of the listings. Fast forward to 1996 when phone directories first went online and the weight of the tomes decreased.
Some places consider paper telephone books to be a waste of resources. There are actually cities that tried to ban the distribution of telephone books. The industry sued and a court ruling permitted the continued distribution of the estimated 540 million phone directories that are produced each year.
The thought is that the manufacture and distribution of so many phone books creates tons of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are one of the boogeymen of today. While we may not all agree that they are real, we do seem to agree that they are bad.
Another argument is that they consume tons of paper. While I agree that is true, the consumption of paper leads to more trees being planted to satisfy the demand. How can more trees be a bad thing? Besides, they can always be recycled.
Plus, think of all the sales people, designers, printers and everyone else involved in the manufacture and distribution of phone books. They will all have to find other ways of making a living. Therefore, it can be argued that phone books are good for the economy.
Paper directories have an advantage over electronic ones in that one can write on them. It is hard to scribble directions, hours or other extra information on a screen. Unlisted numbers can be added or changed at will. There is no concern if the Internet is down or the electricity goes out. Leftover books can be used as cheap mulch or to line a bird cage. One can also use them for a craft project to keep the kids busy on a rainy afternoon. And there is the aforementioned booster seat usage. Try doing that with your electronic device.
In future years this will all be moot as phone books will one day disappear without even a whimper. In fact, I’m not sure my grandchildren even know what a phone book is.