I used to work at a nightclub in downtown San Francisco that often hosted musical acts. The flyers passed around by every ambitious promoter in the city would cover the floors and tables along with empty cups and spilled liquor by the time the doors were closed.
The funny thing is, I never really saw anyone reading a card stock flyer the entire time I was working there – no matter how shiny it was. The most common use for them as far as I could see, was to fold them in half to use as a rolling tray. Everyone wanted to pass them out, few took the time to read them.
It occurs to members of the digital age more often than not that many paper products that were once a key method of communication, are now almost completely obsolete. Granted there are some baby boomers left in the world, who still refuse to send a text message or sign up for Facebook. But do a few stragglers really offset the monumental cost of money, time and natural resources that are required to drop a newspaper that you will never read onto your front step every day? By the time it gets there I already read the same story online on multiple sites for a more balanced perspective, then went shopping after doing a Google search LIKE EVERYONE ELSE.
Yellow Pages executives claim that if they were to stop printing phone books, then it would be devastating to small business, even though every contractor out there is already on Yelp, Angie’s List and Google Maps. So lets have a look at all of the fun things that you can still do with your old phone books, newspapers and party flyers.
1. Rolling tray
The advantage of a rolling tray is that it will keep your stash from spilling out all over the floor while you roll your joints. There are nicer rolling trays made of wood out on the market, but those are for hippies and dispensary employees. Reuse that old party flyer as a rolling tray to save money and trees.
2. Build a fort
Each phone book that is dropped off at your domicile is about as hefty as a brick. There for it is possible to build a fort like structure out of them, supplemented perhaps by some furniture and blankets. You could even wall off your living room and then rent it out!
3. Sound proof a room
I’m no audio engineer, but I know enough about audio production to tell you that recording studios are insulated spaces which helps to reduce an echo when the sound waves being recorded hit the walls of the room. If you are cutting a demo in a home made recording studio, why not re-purpose your stacks of old yellow pages and newspapers to line the walls of the room? This also might help with noisy neighbors.
4. Public protest
In 2011 a demonstration group rode their bikes up to the Yellow Pages headquarters in San Francisco and dropped off 1500 phone books in front of their building. Oh the irony of it all.
Legal Note: Please do not have a violent protest, that is not what I am saying.
5. Notepad
While I type blogs blogs on my computer, I often like to jot down little notes with a pen as I do research or have a sudden idea I want to remember. A lot of the times it is not anything that is really notebook worthy. Right now I have the front pages under my laptop as I work, and it is covered in short term reminders.
6. Line your cat’s litter box
You don’t want to just pour the cat litter directly into the tray because it would be really gross every time you had to clean it out. I don’t know what people would use for this purpose if they stopped making newspapers. Maybe that is something all the out of business newspaper factories could start making instead.
7. Paper mache sculpture
As you can see in this picture, someone has crafted a beautiful sculpture of a man reading a newspaper, out of old newspapers. Paper mache is an artistic medium that originated in France, in which pieces of paper are bound together with an adhesive. If your sculpture is good enough it might even make you a famous artist!
8. Make a funny hat
A funny hat can bring a smile to anyone’s face. But not everyone can afford to patronize fancy hatterys all of the time. Luckily you can use old newspapers to make a variety of amusing headgear that is cheap and stylish. Try searching the Internet for hundreds of different hat templates.
9. Garden mulch
Garden mulch is beneficial for holding in moisture and blocking the growth of weeds in the garden. Here in this picture, a woman is using newspapers as a weed barrier in her herb garden. Excess paper can also be shredded into fine strips and then mixed with organic materials to make recycled ground cover and organic fertilizer. You could literally be growing trees out of the trees that had to die to make all those Yellow Pages.
10. Wrapping paper
The standard for recycled wrapping paper is to cover a box in the comic strips from the funnies. But you can get as creative as you want with old newspaper, Yellow Pages and other materials to wrap a gift as gorgeous as anything you may see in a department store. Why not start your own gift wrap company USING THE INTERNET?!
Elizabeth de Moya lives near San Diego, CA. She volunteers for the birds, and she works at the zoo. She is going back to school to study pre veterinary medicine. She has a BA in Linguistics from UC Berkeley.