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I was interested to learn that recently Westminster City Council threatened legal action against the distributors of free newspapers after it was found that they created four tons of waste a day. It seems that two of the publishers then agreed to meet some of the costs of recycling.
Our weekend papers now come with all sorts of supplements and inserts, most of which are discarded immediately. Perhaps I am one of the few that only read the news and, sometimes, the travel and book supplements, but all the rest are uninteresting rubbish to be put out with all the other stuff for recycling along with the two free newspapers we receive each week.
When you sit and think about it, we are inundated with paper we do not need and haven’t asked for every day. It’s not only the free newspapers, supplements and inserts but all the stuff we get by hand through the letterbox. We regularly get flyers from the local traders, supermarkets, Indian and Chinese restaurants and pizza parlours to name but a few, all of which go straight into the recycling bin without being read.
Royal Mail do their bit also to help our bulging recycling sacks, for they have for some time now been delivering flyers and commercial announcements along with the morning mail. And if you attempt to block these unwanted items you are told that this will also block unaddressed, and possibly important, notifications from the police and from the local council as well.
You have only to sit on a commuter or London Underground train after the morning rush hour to see the shambolic effect that all this free ‘stuff’ has on the carriages, for it all has to be collected up and taken away in rubbish sacks and dealt with.
So the stand of Westminster Council is a good one in my view. It is a move that other councils could follow suit and demand a contribution towards their waste collection and disposal. That would reduce unwanted paper and so help the environment that the government and others bang on about each day.
And couldn’t people that read all of the weekend papers along with their supplements and inserts from cover to cover pay more for the privilege? Or, better still, could I pay less for receiving less?
If the sacks of paper that my household put out each week is anything to go by, the sheer amount of unwanted paper being produced around the country - and the trees and other materials used to produce them - must be phenomenal.
Maybe, it’s time to do something about it and, in the process, help the environment.
As Shakespeare warns us in Richard II, act 3: ‘Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes, write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.’
.
I was interested to learn that recently Westminster City Council threatened legal action against the distributors of free newspapers after it was found that they created four tons of waste a day. It seems that two of the publishers then agreed to meet some of the costs of recycling.
Our weekend papers now come with all sorts of supplements and inserts, most of which are discarded immediately. Perhaps I am one of the few that only read the news and, sometimes, the travel and book supplements, but all the rest are uninteresting rubbish to be put out with all the other stuff for recycling along with the two free newspapers we receive each week.
When you sit and think about it, we are inundated with paper we do not need and haven’t asked for every day. It’s not only the free newspapers, supplements and inserts but all the stuff we get by hand through the letterbox. We regularly get flyers from the local traders, supermarkets, Indian and Chinese restaurants and pizza parlours to name but a few, all of which go straight into the recycling bin without being read.
Royal Mail do their bit also to help our bulging recycling sacks, for they have for some time now been delivering flyers and commercial announcements along with the morning mail. And if you attempt to block these unwanted items you are told that this will also block unaddressed, and possibly important, notifications from the police and from the local council as well.
You have only to sit on a commuter or London Underground train after the morning rush hour to see the shambolic effect that all this free ‘stuff’ has on the carriages, for it all has to be collected up and taken away in rubbish sacks and dealt with.
So the stand of Westminster Council is a good one in my view. It is a move that other councils could follow suit and demand a contribution towards their waste collection and disposal. That would reduce unwanted paper and so help the environment that the government and others bang on about each day.
And couldn’t people that read all of the weekend papers along with their supplements and inserts from cover to cover pay more for the privilege? Or, better still, could I pay less for receiving less?
If the sacks of paper that my household put out each week is anything to go by, the sheer amount of unwanted paper being produced around the country - and the trees and other materials used to produce them - must be phenomenal.
Maybe, it’s time to do something about it and, in the process, help the environment.
As Shakespeare warns us in Richard II, act 3: ‘Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes, write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.’
.
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