PUBLISHER CONFUSED ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN END USER AND MANUFACTURER RESPONSIBILITY

I am not surprised that Tom McAllister with Ad Ventures Publishing refuses to go through my garbage and pull out my old phone book for recycling.  I wonder where he would take my phone book if he were to pull it out of my garbage.

My personal recycling options are extremely limited.  I can pay Maui Recycling Service to pick it up with my other residential paper or I can rip out the pages and feed them to my compost pile and send the binding to the landfill. 

Mr. McAllister and his team are well aware that phone books cannot be recycled in Hawaii yet he implies that the burden of keeping the books out of our landfills rests with the community and the end users.

I might be willing to accept my community responsibility for recycling these books if my community had solicited the books.  But this is not what happened.  These books were simply left on or near residential mailboxes.

Individuals had to make a choice whether to leave the book beside the road or take it into their home.  Some took them inside and found them useful.  Others threw them directly into their trash.  Many were outraged when they learned that there was no recycling plan.

There is a huge difference between end user responsibility and manufacturer's responsibility.  When the end user solicits or buys a product, that product becomes their responsibility.  When a manufacturer produces a good and delivers it unbidden to a community in which it cannot be recycled, that would be their responsibility.

In my mind, a book left lying outside is litter until someone takes responsibility for it.

Camille Armantrout