Waste of resources ...

Every year, I get 3 big fat telephone books and yellow pages. This is despite the fact that I do not own a land line (although I did own one till about 2 years ago). Yesterday, I took all my phonebooks, some old magazines and some old newspapers and dropped them off at the local recycling center. Now, I ended up driving about 12 miles extra to drop off the stuff (which weighed about 45 lb, most of it was the phone books). It got me wondering ... was it worth going out of the way to drop it for recycling (as against just dumping it in the regular trash)?

I am trying to figure out answers to the following questions:
* The cost of the gas not withstanding, was the pollution from driving 12 miles justified by recycling 45 lb of paper?
* Why do I get those big fat phone books at all? I never even use them - whatever information I need I can get online! What a colossal waste ...
* Is there a better way for companies like AT&T or YellowBook to get money from companies who advertise in these publications and not dump so much garbage on society. Even if one believes that a good chunk of it gets recycled, its like trying to clean up a spill that never should have happened in the first place ...