In July of 2009, 3 high school freshmen formed GreenTree of Tulsa as an environmental group that would help reduce the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Our plan is to plant trees in Tulsa and surrounding areas to sequester Co2. While working on this project we came to realize that not only the planet and humans are affected, animals are also greatly affected. Climate change and high Co2 levels are severely harming the polar bear's habitats. Due to their dangerous situation, polar bears have become a large part of our project. Since July of 2009, GreenTree of Tulsa(GTOT) has planted over 2,150 trees to help save the polar bears and our environment.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Companies Yank Cord on Printed White Pages

Companies yank cord on printed white pages
The following is an article that appeared today in our local paper The Tulsa World. New phone books are scheduled to start being delivered in Tulsa this week. We will begin our phonebook recycling as soon as the new books hit local doorsteps. Companies yank cord on residential phone books Emily Goodmann sits with a stack of phone books at the Northwestern University Library in Evanston, Ill. Goodmann is a doctoral student who is doing her dissertation on the history of the telephone book. CHARLES REX ARBOGAST/Associated Press By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM Associated Press Published: 11/12/2010 2:22 AM Last Modified: 11/12/2010 5:47 AM RICHMOND, Va. - What's black and white and read all over? Not the white pages, which is why regulators have begun granting telecommunications companies the go-ahead to stop mass-printing residential phone books, a musty fixture of Americans' kitchen counters, refrigerator tops and junk drawers. In the past month alone, New York, Florida and Pennsylvania approved Verizon Communications Inc.'s request to quit distributing residential white pages. Residents in Virginia have until Nov. 19 to provide comments on a similar request pending with state regulators. Telephone companies argue that most consumers now check the Internet rather than flip through pages when they want to reach out and touch someone. "Anybody who doesn't have access to some kind of online way to look things up now is probably too old to be able to read the print in the white pages anyway," joked Robert Thompson, a pop-culture professor at Syracuse University. Phone companies note that eliminating residential white pages would reduce environmental impact by using less paper and ink. It also can't hurt their bottom lines to cut out the cost of a service that rarely gets used and generates little beyond nostalgia. The first telephone directory was issued in February 1878 - a single page that covered 50 customers in New Haven, Conn. That sheet grew into a book that became virtually a household appliance, listing numbers for neighbors, friends and colleagues, not to mention countless potential victims of prank calls. Fewer people rely on paper directories for a variety of reasons: More people rely solely on cell phones, whose numbers typically aren't included in the listings; more listings are available online; and mobile phones and caller ID systems on landlines can store a large number of frequently called numbers. The number of traditional landlines has been declining for the better part of the decade, and landlines now are being disconnected at a rate of nearly 10 percent each year, according to company financial reports. A survey conducted for SuperMedia Inc. by Gallup shows that between 2005 and 2008, the percentage of households relying on stand-alone residential white pages fell from 25 percent to 11 percent. Unlike the residential white pages, the business directories printed on yellow pages are doing fine, at least according to the Yellow Pages Association. The industry trade group claims more half the people in the U.S. still let their fingers do the walking every month, and that 550 million residential and business directories are still printed every year. If the white pages are nearing their end, then Emily Goodmann hopes the directories would be archived for historical, genealogical or sociological purposes. "The telephone directory stands as the original sort of information network that not only worked as kind of a social network in a sense, but it served as one of the first information resources," said Goodmann, a doctoral student at Northwestern University who is writing her dissertation on the history of phone books as information technology. "It's sort of heartbreaking ... even though these books are essentially made to be destroyed." Original Print Headline: Companies yank cord on printed white pages By MICHAEL FELBERBAUM Associated Press E-Edition Print Email Comment RSS Bookmark Share