London's Free Newspaper Farce

Cyclists in London can think themselves lucky. Why is this, apart from the obvious benefits of cycling (healthy, fewer emissions, expense etc...)?

Well it's because they manage to avoid the armies of free newspaper "pushers" found on virtually every street corner, desperately thrusting poorly-written celebrity-ridden advertising packages into people's hands. But the luck doesn't stop there because cyclists are also spared the sight of the gratuitous waste of paper created when all of these free newspapers are discarded on buses and trains.

On three of the tube lines alone, 9.5 tonnes of free newspapers are discarded every day, with maybe four times this over the whole underground network. I'm pretty sure that the stacks of papers that inevitably pile up towards the ends of lines are simply jettisoned into non-recyclable waste bins. Seems a terrible waste of resources to me!

The Metro seems to pride itself on using recycled paper and encouraging their readers to dispose of their papers in recycle bins around London. However a vast fraction of these free papers must simply be thrown in to ordinary waste bins (plus we must also take into account the lack of bins around train stations due to the threat of terrorism).

Surely its time there is some provision made, preferably by the newspaper companies who are creaming off a profit from this irresponsible publication, for recycling facilities on trains and helping facilitate the tube and train companies to separate ordinary waste from the recyclable newspaper.

I'm obviously not the first person to become frustrated by this situation and a much fuller discussion of this point can be found at this ecolocal blog. However despite comments on this quoted blog about the stand that several councils are taking against the publishers, I fail to have seen any progress on this issue.

It seems that there are campaigns to help the situation in London now (see Project Freesheet) and to start raising awareness on the waste of free newspapers.

I'll finish by urging people not to take a copy of a free newspaper from the street touts..... there'll be a spare copy (or twenty) on the tube for you anyway! And when you've done with that copy, please take it home and recycle it.