let the Yellow Pages do the walking

Every year San Franciscans are pained by the bales of wasted paper which pile up outside their apartment buildings known as The Yellow Pages. The Internet has basically made these useless, and the publishing waste and forced acceptance (i.e. no option for refusal for delivery) of these tomes is offensive.

Now, San Francisco Board of Supervisors President David Chiu has proposed a ban on unsolicited delivery of these piles of paper waste. From the SF Appeal:

In a case of serendipitous timing, the same day that Board of Supes president David Chiu plans on proposing a ban on unsolicited distribution of Yellow Pages directories in SF, the folks who make the Yellow Pages say they're launching a site allowing you to opt out of receiving the tomes.

According to the SF Department of the Environment, it costs as much as $750,000 per year to recycle the volumes -- that is, for the reported 1 million plus that manage to make it into the recycling in the first place.

Under Chiu's proposal,Yellow Pages delivery people wouldn't be allowed to leave the book for you unless you opt in (basically, subscribe) to receive it. Get a book when you didn't request it and Yellow Pages could get fined as much as $500 per offense. 

As one might expect, the folks behind the Yellow Pages view it as "an infringement of our constitutional rights," and say they intend to fight the proposal, which they've done successfully in the past.