Corporate Responsibility & Dying Business Models

A common urban sight like the above wouldn’t seem to conjure up much thought but to me, this image says many things. These bundles of Verizon Yellow and White Pages get dumped in my Brooklyn neighborhood seemly per quarter. They get left on the curb and just as effortlessly ignored as they make a b-line towards business model extinction. I’m trying to figure out why Verizon still publishes these. I guess in a neighborhood as diversified as mine, there are plenty of people who still rely on printed directories. For the most part it seems like these directories end up ignored as they eternally lie in apartment complex hallways or eventually in a landfill.

So my questions are:

• How much money is spent organizing, formatting, printing, and delivering these things?
• How is advertising within these sold to the advertiser?
• Just how effective is the advertising?
• What’s the carbon footprint of their production?
• If only 20% (based on how many copies visibly remain) of a community uses these, could this be considered littering?
• Are the chemicals used in the paper and ink environmentally toxic?

This not only seems like a dead and fruitless business model but also environmentally irresponsible. I would be willing to guess that:

• A lot of time, money, and effort is placed in production and delivery.
• The adverting is sold as part of a larger marketing package.
• The effectiveness of the advertising is near zero.
• The carbon footprint is extremely high.
• If these are as useless as they seem, the amount of litter would be astronomical.
• The chemicals used in production could be harmful in large quantities/concentrations.

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