Small steps

Certainly it's good news that Westminster City Council have at last been able to announce the results of their protracted negotiations with the free newspaper publishers this week. As Westminster have been bearing the brunt of the freesheet war over the past 12 months it is only sensible that pilot projects are tested out in the borough which has to deal with 4 tonnes of newspaper every day. However a few questions spring to mind...

Are these measures alone going to solve the problem of diverting free newspapers from going to landfill?
What measures will be put in place to deal with the excessive number of free papers to be found on the buses, the tube network and the regional trains services?
How are we going to stop the culture of abandoning waste on the transport infrastructure which is so costly and bad for the environment?

On September 12th Project Freesheet is going to take to the streets once more to assess the impact of the new bins being sponsored by Associated Newspapers and News International. We will gather data which will give an accurate account of how much paper is ending up in the aforementioned recycling bins compared to what is ending up in the waste bins or on the street. If you would like to join us please email via the website for more details

As the gentle ripple of approval throughout the media continues let us see how many more boroughs and transport networks follow Westminster's lead in succeeding to get the free newspaper publishers to clean up their own mess.

Press Gazette coverage

More coverage for Project Freesheet today.

Sarah Lagan at Press Gazette has written this article

Good to see that Friends of the Earth and Westminster Council are now challenging the newspaper publishers to clean up their act. Placing the onus on the producer of polluting materials has to be the way forward

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

flickr url

well, things are progressing here; slowly but ever so surely. Big thanks goes to Hans, my good mate from Germany, who is building the all new website, which'll make the whole operation look a lot more professional. Have a look at work in progress if you're interested
The other news is that I've created a flickr site in order to tap into their vast and prolific online community.

5-4-3-2-1

projectfreesheet.com is go!!

well, at least I've got some blurb up and am ready to start recruiting you lovely people. But I guess first of all I need to start by explaining myself and what I'm up to. I was reading an article in The Ecologist magazine written by Jon Hughes recently and it inspired me to start an art project which marries up my main interests - the environment and photography.

When I read the article it struck me as a very good example of contrasting approaches to life in the 21st Century. On the one hand you have 'big industry' being faced with increasing competition, tighter operating budgets, and more aggressive marketing techniques than ever; on the other hand there are the concerns of the people who see more waste and irresponsible consumption than ever before.

So, i thought, here is an art project that could serve as a raising-awareness-about-an-issue initiative. I would go round all the tube lines and stations, recycling centers, waste sub-contractors and the like and take photos that would end up as a collage and eventually an exhibition. But thats a tad 20th century innit...

So how about inviting people to upload their own photos of freesheet newspapers wherever they see them? In the gutter, on the tube, on the bus, etc etc. They're everywhere!! If we try to get people to upload their photo's we could aim to collect 1.5 million or so. That's how many issues of these freesheets are being handed out every day.

Currently I have built a very basic website and need to start raising some funds in order to build a proper one. If I'm going to try to upload 1.5 million images from Londoners (though i guess they could come from further afield) then I need some pretty smart apps and programs to automate the whole process. And in case you didn't think 1.5 million images sounds like very many - 1.5 million photos equates to 200 images per day for 21 years!!

So, if you're interested, watch this space where I'll be updating my progress.

btw, any ideas or suggestions would be most welcome!!