Isramart : Sensis goes carbon neutral, but phone books here to stay

Isramart news:
In today's fast-moving information world, the concept of letting your fingers do the walking rarely goes beyond a computer keyboard.

But it seems traditional hard copy telephone books are surviving the internet age, despite their often unwelcome arrival each year and pressures on companies to go green.

The publisher of Australia's white and yellow pages, Sensis, has just received greenhouse friendly certification from the Federal Government and plans to reduce its carbon footprint by 5 per cent.

But the Telstra-owned Sensis has no plans to dump its hard copy phone books, even though they account for the company's biggest carbon emissions.

Instead, Sensis intends to offset the 170,000 tonnes of emissions created by the directories through more recycling, more four cylinder diesel cars in the Sensis fleet and a greater use of video conferencing to cut back on emission-causing travel.

Sensis has been acutely aware of the negative phone book publicity for at least a decade and has increased recycling from just 4 per cent in 1999 to the present level of 96 per cent.

So will the weighty and at times unloved phone books ever be sacrificed for the increasingly popular online white and yellow page sites?

The chief executive of Sensis, Bruce Akhurst, says it won't happen in his watch even though many Australians might not understand how a phone book can be carbon neutral.

"The white and yellow pages are used very extensively by Australians all over the country. There's about 60 million every single week. So I can't see how the directories will be going away any time soon, certainly not in my lifetime." Mr Akhurst said.

"But at the same time we need to make sure that we're operating the business and that these products are being produced in a way that's not damaging the environment."

So given anecdotal evidence that many phone books are thrown into recycling bins and never make it into homes and offices, would Sensis consider making the books a special order?

Bruce Akhurst disappointed critics by persisting with a policy of "opting out" rather than requesting phone books to be delivered.

"Australians do have the option of opting out of receiving a directory and there's a 1-800 number inside the front cover of directories that people can ring. But what we've found is that people want the directories and they use them extensively."

Sensis has described the greenhouse friendly certification as a "world first" in the global directories business putting it ahead of competitors in the North America and Europe.

The reluctance of Sensis to abandon hard copy phone books is anchored in sound financial reasoning given the strong advertising revenue and iconic status of the yellow pages from the highly successful "not happy Jan" campaign.

Sensis has been consistently described as Telstra's "jewel in the crown" and the company has performed well at times when Telstra was under attack, particularly during the stewardship of Sol Trujillo.