Newsgroups: tor.general
Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!neat.ai.toronto.edu!cebly
From: cebly@ai.toronto.edu (Craig Boutilier)
Subject: Re: Recycling in general(was Re: Recycling Phonebooks)
Message-ID: <89Mar24.152037est.38172@neat.ai.toronto.edu>
Organization: Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
References: <89Mar15.154034est.19517@me.utoronto.ca> <444@ontenv.UUCP> <2226@maccs.McMaster.CA>
Distribution: tor
Date: Fri, 24 Mar 89 15:20:31 EST

In article <2226@maccs.McMaster.CA> nusip@maccs.UUCP (Mike Borza) writes:
> ...
>Incidentally, I saw on the news last night that Bell had ordered the
>destruction of what must be a forest's worth of telephone books because
>they found the front cover painting of a famous figure skating duo too
>racy (although less so than the costumes displayed at last year's Olympics).
>Bell was hasty to point out that since they were printers of the phone
>books, they could easily recycle them.  Since it's so easy for them to
>rectify their own screwup, maybe they should take the (now well-used)
>phone books back to slip them in with the new ones.
>
>Or have I missed some fundamental point here?
>
>mike borza     <antel!mike@maccs.uucp>
>       God bless the greening of Maggie.

A quick correction: Bell is not involved with those phone books. It's
Maritime Tel & Tel, the phone co. in N.S. (and P.E.I. ?). Estimates of
the cost of the screw-up (100 000 phone books) range around $20 000.
The books were to be re-covered, not recycled. Hence, old directories
aren't exactly amenable to the "recycling" they have in mind.
However, the latest word has it that MT&T has decided to sell the covers
for $1 each ($1.50 with directory attached) in the hope that people will
consider them collector's items. Proceeds of the sale are to go to the
Canadian figure skating governing body, as the cover was aimed at promoting
the 1990 World Championships in Halifax. An interwiew with the artist who
designed the cover indicated he was not too thrilled with the decision.

Craig Boutilier
Dept. of Computer Science
University of Toronto
---
cebly@ai.toronto.edu