PASSED! SF Opt-In Yellow Page Ordinance

City of San Francisco Yellow Pages Ordinance

San Francisco passed Supervisor David Chiu’s proposed three-year pilot program to reduce waste in the distribution of Yellow Pages phone directories to private residences and businesses in San Francisco. Prior to the passage, San Francisco did not regulate the distribution of Yellow Pages phone directories. This ordinance is the first opt-in program in the United States.

The Supervisor’s office found cost savings for San Francisco businesses in reduced marketing expenses. This initiative demonstrates San Francisco’s commitment to a “Green Economy”.

According to Supervisor Chiu’s office, the three-year pilot program begins on October 1, 2011. The ordinance prohibits the distribution of Yellow Pages phone books to private residences and businesses in San Francisco unless the phone book is requested.

Along with the key environmental and civic leaders, Green Chamber of Commerce Vice President and Co-Founder of Dharma Merchant Services, Alexia Marcous made a statement in support of the ordinance. Ms. Marcous highlighted business and environmental reasons for the Green Chamber’s position:

This ordinance brings to light a real disparity between what you pay for and what you get with a Yellow Pages ad. I just called about an ad this morning, and was told that my ad in the phone book would be distributed to just under one million recipients.

However if every single person and business actually collected a book (and judging by the stacks of uncollected books, that is highly unlikely), it’s estimated that only 38% or about 370,000 people and business actually use the Yellow Pages. So with the current model, I’m paying for exposure to almost 1 million recipients, but I’m only getting exposure to about 370,000.

By distributing books in quantities that more accurately represent the real population of phone book users, this ordinance would enforce more honesty in the real exposure that is being paid for.

This all leads to improved ROI, especially for green businesses who cater to markets that hold them accountable to higher standards of sustainability. If green businesses don’t know already know the facts about the environmental cost of the current Yellow Pages distribution methods, once they learn of these statistics, no green business is going to advertise in this channel that generates such a large amount of waste.

The Green Chamber of Commerce worked in conjunction with the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to research, support, and argue for this bill. The Green Chamber of Commerce plans to work on helping other cities pass similar ordinances.

Supporting Information

Yellow Pages Legislative Digest (PDF)

Yellow Pages Legislation FAQ (PDF)

Yellow Pages Ordinance (PDF)