YellowPagesGoesGreen.Org

Info

YellowPagesGoesGreen.org is an online search engine and telephone directory with an "environmentally friendly" marketing standpoint. They encompass yellow (business) and residential (white) pages and currently feature over 28.5 million business listings throughout the United States. Users of the site are able to add, edit, and delete their Business and Residential listings. In addition, YellowPagesGoesGreen.org also has a digital coupon collecting and sharing app available for both Android and iPhone devices.

Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org touts itself as a purely digital alternative to traditional print telephone directories. As a web-based service, their marketing claim is that they do not generate the large amount of paper-based waste associated with physical directory media such as telephone books. Paper directories have long been cited as a source of pollution and waste in society; according to Statspotting.com, paper waste accounts for up to 40% of total waste produced in the United States each year, which adds up to 71.6 million tons of paper waste per year in the United States alone. In addition, the Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org service states that they update their listings on a daily basis, keeping them constantly current, whereas print phone directories are only manufactured periodically and therefore do not always offer up-to-date directory information. As an example, an article published by Forbes by writer Tom Barlow entitled "Yellow Pages: No More Waste on the Stoop," touts the internet as the clear and present successor of print yellow pages; in comparison, he says, it renders phone books "as obsolete as a slide rule." Another service Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org provides for users is the ability for anyone nationwide to “opt-out” of local telephone book delivery; their website offers a portal to The Local Search Association's National Yellow Pages Consumer Choice Opt-Out Site, which allows anyone in the United States to cease delivery of phone books to their house from their local telephone carrier; a similar program in Seattle, Washington was recently responsible for the cancellation of close to a quarter of a million books since its inception, proving there is a need for an effective national opt-out service. The site also features a regularly updated Blog that primarily features articles of an environmental nature, such as organic crop growing, hybrid vehicles, and ways to avoid pollution. Since its purchase of Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org, Yellow Pages Directory, Inc. was approved to be treated as a private S-corporation by the New York State Department of State Division of Corporation effective May 20, 2010, and has also been an accredited member of the Better Business Bureau since July 15, 2011.

History

The website that would eventually become Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org originally launched in April, 2010 as InteractiveCities.com; using their lack of a print/paper-based format as a marketing tool to appeal to environmentally conscious consumers, this privately owned online business directory consisted of a basic neighborhood Yellow Pages search engine. On September 16, 2010, it was announced that InteractiveCities.com had been acquired by Yellow Pages Directory, Inc. and subsequently re-branded as Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org. Yellow Pages Directory, Inc. is headquartered in East Northport, NY. Owner Michael Keegan said that he saw in the purchase the potential to cater to the growing environmentally conscious movement prevailing throughout the United States; Keegan has stated that helping the environment is something that became important to him personally as well after seeing first-hand how much waste Americans are capable of generating on a day-by-day basis. Keegan attended Farmingdale State College and then Oakdale’s Dowling College, where he graduated with a BA in Business Administration; he currently also owns a Northport-based real estate firm. Initially starting out solely as a United States Yellow Page Business Directory, Yellowpagesgoesgreen.org later added Canadian listings in July 2012 (although these were removed a year later), in addition to Residential White Page listings in March 2013. A Smartphone App for Android and iPhone devices dubbed the “Best Coupon App,” which allows users to search for, save, and share local coupons with their mobile devices, doing away with the need for paper coupons.