H&K Twitterer in trouble

Hill & Knowlton is in hot water with its client Telstra, as the agency's Sydney general manager Fergus Kibble tweeted about the questionable environmental credibility of its Yellow Pages directory.

According to a recent report from Mumbrella, one of the telco's companies is Sensis, which owns the White Pages and Yellow Pages phone directories. Recently, there has been debate about the environmental impact of printing so many copies of the directories, although most people now use the internet.

Despite Hill & Knowlton's relationship with Telstra, Kibble posted several tweets against the production of directories such as:

“Why are Sensis still delivering phone books? They should be delivered only by request.”

“Save some trees”.

“Sensis should stop dumping unwanted books. Retweet for opt-in phone books in 2010.”

He also posted an online photo of a pile of abandoned Yellow Pages and invited others to retweet his messages against the unwanted dumping of print editions.

This week, Sensis is starting a major PR drive to reassure the public that its directory business is environmentally-friendly. The company has also recently announced that it is now offsetting its carbon emissions and claims that 96 per cent of its printed editions are recycled or reused.