Choosing to opt-out, fewer residents getting phone book

More than 20 percent of households and businesses in Seattle are opting out of phone books.

One year ago, the city implemented an opt-out program that includes fines for publishers that fail to honor opt-out requests.

Dick Lilly, with Seattle Public Utilities, says the  first year numbers show the program is popular.

“More than 75,000 people opted out of 420,000 individual deliveries and saved 375 tons of paper,” Lilly said.

Still, nearly 80 percent of homes and businesses continue to get the books. The city suspects a lot of people probably just haven't gotten around to opting out.

“There’s a huge amount of interest in stopping phone book deliveries. which seem dramatically wasteful when you get three, four or five each year.” said Lilly.

May 22nd is the last day to stop deliveries of Dex phone books,  which are scheduled to be dropped at homes in July.  At the  www.seattle.gov/stopphonebooks website, you can choose which books you want to opt out of.

It's not necessary to renew once you opt out.