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.

Insania

"The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has spoken, the politicians have uttered their platitudes, environmental activists call for action, the flat earthers remain in denial and the rest of us go shopping"

So says Fazlun Khalid of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology and Environmental Sciences on the BBC website. And isn't he right. With all the legislation and action currently being considered by the Governments, NGO's and think tanks the world over, how much action is being taken by the likes of you and me? How many compromises are being considered? How many employees are trying to change the attitude of their colleagues?

I had a meeting with Westminster Council yesterday. They showed me some interesting images they had captured from rubbish trucks they were searching. Within these trucks 22% of the rubbish turned out to be newspapers heading straight for the landfill sites east of London.

• 4 officers analyzed 1 tonne of street cleaning waste on 29/11/2006. The waste was presented loose from litter bins and in sweepers bags. The contents of 166 sweepers bags were segregated.

• 219 kg of newspapers collected. 22% of the waste sorted was newspaper.

Some of the photographs they took featured unopened newspaper bundles. Papers that had not even been distributed.

Do we not have a responsibility to call to an end this insanity? For how much longer can we all turn a blind eye each and every day to all the unnecessary waste going straight to landfill?

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

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?