Wellesley phone book madness?

A newish Wellesley resident wrote in  to ask why she recently received 3 different phone books… when she doesn’t even have a land line phone.

The reader wrote: “In a town so devoted to recycling, this seems like such an obvious waste.  The books are going directly to my recycle bin. And, in today’s world of online searching, a paper phone book seems outdated.  I would never reach for it to find a number.  Am I alone in that thinking?”

We know what she means, having compiled the four books you see here ourselves, and having tossed out at least another 1 or 2 that never made it to the kitchen pile.  We just had another thrown into our driveway within the past week or two.

One of our collection is the Wellesley Hills Junior Women’s Club’s Wellesley Phone Book, an annual fundraiser supported by many local businesses. I believe that one also has a nice laminated map of Wellesley in it that we tossed into our car. Though it sounds as though next year’s might be the last of these.

Anyway, if anyone has ideas on why we still get pelted with phone books, let us know (guess there must be money to be made, at least in the yellow pages part.). Some states are actually dropping a requirement that Verizon and AT&T keep delivering white pages.

Wellesley Police say they haven’t received any complaints about phone books being delivered and that delivering the books doesn’t violate the town’s solicitor by-law.