[detourdog]

The mailroom of my apartment building in college in 1988 was full of phone books that were unclaimed. I took enough to make a platform for my futon.

[ToucanLoucan]

As funny as these stories are it makes my environmentalist blood boil. Such ridiculous waste at scale for a product barely anyone actually wants.

[dcminter]

Pre-internet the commercial phone book was actually fairly useful. The "problem" was that most people didn't need it updating as often as the phone book company would have liked.

[detourdog]

I well stocked research library had phone books from all over.