1493 Magne-trash

I was recycling phonebooks recently. They do build up these days. With some years bringing two and even three phonebooks, there are only so many pieces of furniture you can use them to prop up.
But I almost panicked not long after that. I had decided to raise the monitor on my desk to the proper ergonomic level, after I had just thrown out the aforementioned phone books. Fortunately, I found a couple collecting silverfish in the garage.
And bits of silvery metal too.
Because here's the thing. When I was recycling the phonebooks, I first had to strip them of all non-paper accouterments. And in the last few years everybody and their brother in the plumbing, heating, and lawyering industries has decided to stick on a refrigerator magnet for advertising.
I don't know about you, but having a lawyer or a plumber stare me in the face every time I reach for my morning orange juice is not the wake-up experience I relish.
No matter how nice that face may be.
I'd like to see one for a private detective. Magnet PI...
Do they consider how many of those magnets are on phone books? How much space do I actually have on the front of my refrigerator? What with magnetized shopping-list tablets, kids' crafts from school, and sports schedules, I'm magnetized out.
So I tossed them in the trash. But then I worried—how many of these magnets are ending up in the landfill? And how is that affecting the environment?
Do the flies eat them and we get magnet maggots? Are we doing microbial MRI and aligning all our bacteria to even more magnetic virulence?
Or worse—affecting navigation for local boaters?
"Veer right veer right! That's not the North Pole! It's a landfill..."
America, ya gotta love it.