“Westminster City Council will ask for money from the publishers of free newspapers to deal with the cost of cleaning up discarded copies. It says distribution has overwhelmed waste collectors and wants publishers to help foot the bill.

News International, the londonpaper’s owner, said it was in negotiations.

The council says most copies are discarded in the West End and are not recycled, ending up incinerated or in landfills.

“We have the power in the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act to ban the free distribution of literature in our area,” said a council spokesman.

“We want to collect more for recycling, but the investment required for the extra recycling bins and collections is substantial”

As the above story relates to just one area in our nations capital, I shudder at the thought of the total waste that is created in London!? Or even more worryingly the entire UK!

With information via the internet (like on this great website) being so readily available, do we the general public need these so called ‘news‘papers? I for one have never read (flicked through) a free newspaper and turned to my ever so patient wife and said, ‘Darling, thank god I picked up this newspaper, I nearly forgot to go and buy a new car from Crazy Chris’s Car Supermarket! I almost forgot all about it being stolen from outside the house and used in a ram raid on that fruit & veg stall at the end of the road. Few!’ Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for businesses promoting themselves to generate more income but what will the real cost be if they continue to do so via paper?

adam

italic source: bbc website

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 11:03 am and is filed under Industry News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.