That's enough

Westminster council is challenging the free newspaper publishers to clean up their act. And they're doing it under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005.

Here is the story as reported by the Online Press Gazette

'Westminster council estimates that a quarter of all waste in the West End is made up of free newspapers and ultimately ends up in the landfill, rather than being recycled, as it is mixed with street rubbish.'

So, the opposition to the freesheets is gathering pace. What will the reaction of the publishers be?

Greenpeace

'A staggering 80% of the world's original ancient forests have been destroyed or degraded. Today, many countries have lost their entire forest cover. Much of what remains is under threat from illegal and destructive logging'

'Every 2 seconds, an area of ancient forest the size of a football pitch is destroyed.'

The above 2 quotes are taken from a Greenpeace guide called 'The Paper Trail' produced to aid and inform the publishing industry of its impact on the environment. This publication was produced 3 years ago. I wonder how many millions of hectares of ancient forest have disappeared since then? The decisions taken by producers of books and newspapers are still so enormously important to our environment.

I gathered some new perspective on Project Freesheet today from a meeting I had with Belinda Fletcher @ Greenpeace. To talk to someone who is dealing with large organisations on a daily basis and trying to persuade them that they need to take more responsibility for the sourcing of the raw materials that produce their publications, gave me a glimpse of the scale of the challenges which are being faced by campaigners. Quite daunting if you ask me.

Have a look at this if you are interested - http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/flashmap.cfm

Media Domination

"Murdoch is an object lesson in the dangers of concentrated cross-border power. Such power is always problematic because it is apt to reduce diversity, squeeze out the regional and local, and stifle dissent "

A fantastic summation from the Guardian Unlimited website. The article written by Peter Wilby, former editor of the New Statesman and Independent on Sunday, illustrates very clearly the impact a monolith like Rupert Murdoch has on each and every part of the media he chooses to dominate.