It's Phone Book Season

The melting snow has ushered in a new round of phone book deliveries. This time it was three phone books all wrapped up in two shocking orange plastic bags. Paper waste wrapped in plastic waste. Ugh!!

My theory is that magical, computer illiterate beings blanket the entire town with plastic bagged phone books while us innocent villagers sleep at night. No matter how hard I try to find the magically culprits, they are as elusive as Santa Clause on Christmas Day.

The wonderful town I live in allows phone book companies to distribute as many phone books as they wish, yet they do not accept those same phone books for curbside recycling. And opting out didn't seem to work either.

The solution? Hide a tiny blue barrel behind a nondescript phone company building on the other side of town and label it "phone book recycling". Yeah, that's going to keep all of those phone books out of the waste stream...

Today I did notice that a new phone book collection bin was added to my side of town. Ugly as all get out, but it's there never the less.

Peeking through the slot, I noticed that my phone books were the only books in the bin. No friends for my lonely phone books.

These bins are bandaids at best. I've opted out of phone books and chased down mysterious phone book vomiting vans. What can I do to stop the hundreds of repetitive (useless in my house) phone books from being delivered to my neighborhood every year? Why don't I have the right to decide what is delivered in my driveway?

Goodbye Chirstmas Tree

One of my favorite post-Christmas sights is on the dunes of Cape Cod. Locals line the sand dunes with their Christmas trees in hopes of slowing the winter beach erosion. Beautiful and resourceful.

In my neck of the woods, the only sand I see in the winter is the road sand that gets tracked throughout my house. In my neck of the woods Christmas trees get chipped into mulch for spring gardens. Thumbs up to my town officials for great reusing and recycling.

Just the other day I hauled my old tree out to the curb (I've got the sap on my hands to prove it) in anticipation for the town's pick 'n' chip. Soon after I took the tree outside it magically disappeared. Or so I thought...

Through the neighborhood pipeline I heard about a mystery Christmas tree placed in a neighbor's yard. Surprisingly this tree was festively decorated with bras and panties. Shocking to the friendly residents. (they had to have snickered a little)

Now I can't confirm or deny my involvement in this Christmas Tree caper. All I know is that if the bras are cute and in a size 36C, can someone send them this way? You can keep the panties.

Working Against Me

This morning I heard that all too familiar thud in the driveway. Yet another phonebook.


Every few weeks the plastic shrink wrapped phone books mysteriously arrive. A few different companies. Many that look the same. They keep coming by the pound.


After today's newest addition I set-out to recycle a stack of phone books as high as my hip that had accumulated in a closet. In my town phonebooks are not allowed to be added in with the paper recycling. You have to take them to a specific facility in the downtown area of my village. Before I left I called the recycling number proved in one of the phone books to confirm the location.

After I dropped Girlie off at a new friend's house, I asked the mom if she had any phone books that needed recycling. The mother handed the phone books over with a confused look on her face...will her daughter be allowed to play over at the crazy recycling lady's house? I have my doubts.

On my way home I swung by where I remembered the phonebook recycling bin to be. Only it was gone.

Now I had to drive home and call the friendly people at the highway department. Sometimes I wonder why they pick-up when they see me calling....again. This time they did in fact pick-up. I was told that the closest phone book recycling center is a fifteen minute drive...each way...from my house. Seriously?!?

Is the town TRYING to make phone book recycling difficult? They allow phone book after phone book after phone book to be dropped on our driveways yet they don't give us an easy solution as to how to get rid of them. Why can't we drop them by the town garage? Why not the town hall? The library perhaps?

By having the recycling bin behind some random phone company building on the other side of town, the town is practically forcing us residents to toss the books in the trash. How many other people are as crazy as I am to go out of their way to recycle something as everyday as a phone book? I bet my reusable, metal water bottle that the vast majority of those phone books will be forever relegated to the landfill.

Back in 2000, my fair state of Connecticut set a recycling goal of 40%. We aren't there eight years later.

Governor M. Jodi Rell has spearheaded the One Thing Campaign in order to promote environmental awareness and help the citizens save energy. That's great Governor Rell, but what can you do to help my town become involved?

Calling all neighbors! I'll swing by this afternoon to pick-up your old phone books for recycling.

Cut The Cord

Sometimes having a blog is like putting yourself out there, naked, for all of the world to see. I have confessed to all types of sorted and gossipy details about myself. Here comes my newest little secret.

I have cords. I have a lot of cords in my house. So many that I had to designate a drawer in the kitchen just to hold the cords for our portable devices.



What is a gruppie to do with all of those cords?

A bunch of these cords belong to two old cell phones. Power cords, car chargers, hands-free ear pieces. You get the idea. Each of the phones can hold a charge for maybe two hours at best. That doesn't work for me, so the phones had to be replaced.

Now the offending cell phones are sitting in the drawer, tangled in their cords with little hope for the future.

I have spent lots of time online searching for what to do with these phones and cords and there is no easy solution. One company will "recycle" the cell phones but not the cords. I put recycle in quotes because there is not really way to recycle the phones in the sense that they are "squished up and made into new phones" as my Little Guy likes to believe. Most "recycled" phones will likely end-up in an underdeveloped nation polluting their land.

Then there is the idea of donating the phones to the military stationed abroad or a women's shelter. What good would cell phones that have to live attached to a cord do?

In the deep, dark, cobwebby back of my mind I remember hearing about groups that refurbish old cell phones. Where are they?

My cell phone was less than five years old, rarely used and had blown through two batteries. I didn't want a new shiny model. In fact, I could care less. I felt pressured by shoddy manufacturing practices to create more trash and become more of a consumer.

Any suggestions about what to do with my old cell phones and cords would be greatly appreciated.

What To Blog About

Over Christmas my mummy asked if she could read my blog. Not that she knew exactly what a blog was. Still, this is a very big step for a woman who just traded in her manual type writer and carbon paper.


Sitting with Mummy while she read Gruppie Girl was a huge ego boost. Every blogger should sit down with their mummy and read their blog together. Did you know that I am "hysterically funny", "my writing has a great pace" and "I really open eyes about environmental issues without being too pushy"? And yes, I am "beautiful." Thanks Mummy!


Maybe I could rent my mummy out to other bloggers to boost their self-esteem. Do I smell a cottage industry?


Now that Mummy knows that I blog and what a blog actually is, she has started to give me suggestions about what to blog.




The first suggestion was to blog about the cute red shoes that I wore of Christmas. Perhaps. I do wear them a lot and therefore I am not being wasteful. Could that be my green slant?



The second suggestion was to blog about Christmas day at my in-law's house. My sister-in-law took an hour and quickly sewed a bunch of fabric gift bags. Hubby's aunt wrapped our gift in the cloth bag that we wrapped her gift in last year. Everyone seemed to be really concerned about the amount of trash that we were creating. Very different from Christmas' past.


Get your thinking cap on kids; My mummy gave me a gift in a cloth angel bag. I gave my mummy-in-law a gift in that same angel bag. She gave a gift to my sister-in-law in the angel bag. And finally, I got the angel bag back this year with a nice gift card tucked inside. If that isn't recycling, then I don't know what is!


I'm looking forward to more blog ideas from my mummy. Be aware that they may be about how wonderful my mummy thinks I am. But isn't that a mummy's job to tell her kids the great stuff?