That's a chair made out of phone books, and it's in the office of city council member Mike O'Brien, who's trying (as we first reported a week ago) to pass legislation that would require companies like Dex and Yellow Pages to deliver phone books only to people who request them. (Currently, the only option is to "opt out" by asking each company individually not to deliver them). O'Brien has asked constituents to drop off their unwanted phone books at his office; so far, he's collected more than 100 books, which he plans to return to their respective companies.

And he has a funny story: A month ago, O'Brien met with phone-book company representatives who "talked about all the great things they're doing with the opt-out system." A couple of weeks later, O'Brien—who has opted out of phone-book delivery—was standing at his window when a van pulled up to his house; a guy got out and dropped three phone books on his doorstep. O'Brien went outside and asked him, "'how do you guys know who to deliver them to? And he was like, 'Oh, we deliver them to everybody.' I said, 'You don't have a list?' And he said, 'No, no list.'"

"Now, it could just be that I just got the one bad truck in the world, but there's a pattern that says, despite what they say they're trying to do, they're a long way from implementing it."

O'Brien says he expects to take up legislation passing new restrictions on phone books later this year, and probably before the council considers a ban on plastic bags that's also in the works. He anticipates an easier battle against phone books than against plastic bags. "The phone-book companies have done an amazing job over the past ten yeas of organizing the citizens of Seattle to not want phone books, and, frankly, to be fed up with the whole phone book industry," O'Brien says.

Representatives from the two biggest phone book companies, Dex and Yellow Pages, and a lobbyist for the paper industry will come to Seattle to lobby council members on July 13.