Free Newspapers Refuse to Foot Recycling Bill
by Matthew Sparkes, London, UK on 04.20.07
Currently in London there is a battle for commuters attention. Once upon a time there was one free newspaper, Metro. Then came London Lite and the London Paper, which weren't granted permission to distribute in train stations, forcing them onto the street. People dressed in bright purple hats and coats, thrust newspapers at anyone who dares walk within a ten feet radius. If you're already carrying a paper, they thrust one at you, if you say 'no, thanks', they thrust one at you.
It's a nuisance, but the main problem is that London is almost completely coated in a blanket of low-brow celebrity gossip and offbeat news by 6PM. The council have estimated that recycling costs in the last two years have reached £500,000, and have decided that the papers should be the ones to pay. They account for 3-4 tonnes of waste daily in the city, but Westminster Council have said that, "neither has made a satisfactory offer which would significantly help meet the £500,000 set-up and running costs of a scheme to ensure the papers end up getting recycled." The problem is that both are being run at a loss in order to gain market share, so neither want to pay for clean-up costs. The environmental impact of printing 3-4 tonnes of papers daily is enormous, and something clearly needs to be done. Recently in the UK there has been legislation that will force electronics manufacturers to pay for the recycling of their goods once they are disposed, could a similar scheme work for print publishers? :: The Guardian
Better than requiring them to pay, is to mandate a phasing in of higher usage of recycled paper in their product. This may mean that they have to upgrade their equipment to handle the higher post-consumer content, but creating the market for the refuse is better than paying for the cleanup.
Thank you for posting about this issue. I was in London in February and the sight of everyone reading these trashy newspapers sickened and scared me! I think they should phase them out altogether...for 2 days in a row, the front page headlines were about Britney's shaved head. How is that front page news?? Or news at all?
I also thought it was strange that I never saw recycling bins (or maybe they were there and I didn't notice them) for these papers outside tube stations. What do people do with them after reading them?
Very similar situation exists in Dublin. There's an edition of Metro and Hearld AM, both given out free to morning commuters in and around the various commuter rail stations ... there are no recycle bins readily available, and the 'normal' bins quickly reach capacity (to such an extent that there are now signs at some stations asking people not to dispose of the papers there).
In Ireland we have similar recycling legislation for sellers of electronics (anything in anyway electrical in fact, including battery operated toys for example). There is a mention from time to time of bringing in some sort of levy on the publishers of these papers, but to the best of my knowledge nothing has been done yet.
There is precedence however, with the already mentioned environmental levy on electronics, and the plastic bag levy which all retailers must charge (resulting in most people using reusable bags when going shopping).
Sadly, I have to confirm that the same happens in Spain. Where I live, a 250.000 hab. city we have 5 different free newspapers wich are delivered like advertisment flyers. I think 30% of them finish on trash or even on the ground. In a 15-minute walk downtown you'll have to deal with 3 or 4 people triying to give you the same issue of their newspaper.
Do you see the irony here? Today, they even told us about the "earth day" next 22 by giving, of cours, thousands of papers. That's how they achieve to be the most-read (read....?!) paper in the country.
PS: Congratulations for the great job you're doing with the blog
Definitely an "Is it just me ... !?" article - thank you.
I despise these papers and the people who toss them onto the seat, floor, tottering stacks of them outside the barriers. On several occasions I've even helped cleaners carry massive bags of them up flights of stairs at my train station.
The trouble is the amount of morons who read this mind-numbing, superficial junk - all of which is the same cr*p regurgitated back from the same news wires all the journos read - but by God there are plenty of them, and if you ask them (eg colleagues) they just say "Well, it's only a light read and they get recycled when other people read them anyway..." without any thought for what happens when everyone has gone home and the papers are still clogging up the system.
Associated Newspapers and News International themselves should be reponsible for the clear-up, but it's never going to be become a mainstream issue, as they are the ones who control 80% of what 'news' the public sees anyway - catch 22, Orwell style.