12 tons a day

I was taking a 134 home tonight, and on the luggage area as you board the bus there was a pile of newspapers... but not used, New! They were putting them on the bus to hand out, it's outrageous

I occasionally do leave my metro (I don't take the evening papers on principle) on a train, but only when I'm fairly sure someone will pick it up (so not if the carriage is always full of them). In fact on one occasion I tucked it by where I was sat and someone claimed it straight a way.

It's hard to get the balance between recycling (by having two people read the one paper) and littering (by the only person picking it up be a tubes line cleaner at the end of the line). That's why I most often keep hold of it and toss it in the metro racks at the end of my journey or find a bin somewhere.

Whenever I catch a tube after 9pm the carriages are always full of them.

I was in Barnet the other evening and caught a tube home from there. The cleaner got out with four sacks of rubbish. In the clear bags you could see it was virtually all the evening freebies. No sorting and I guess the majority will go to landfill sites.

I think that there should now be a newspaper recycling bin at every tube station, paid for by the freebie newspapers.

Indeed, the problem is that the contents of these papers is so awful, it only takes thirty seconds to read it from cover to cover. They have to be Londons biggest litter problem, and in my humble opinion the worst line for litter is the Waterloo and City. City Am, Metro, London Lite, London Paper and mainstream papers everywhere, with coffee cups and sandwich wrappers as city people have a moving lunch. What makes me laugh is on ITV London Tonight, the London Lite and London Paper are featured near the end of the programme with the Standard as 'the evening papers' - it looks like a joke!

OH MY GOSH!!! ;D

Trouble is TfL DO charge alot of ££££ for the rights to distribute free newspapers on the network, which at present is only the Metro. Other evening publications are handed out outside the station.

12 tons of paper produced, the question the mayor should be asked is how much of this 12 tons is being correctly recycled by the infraco's?

That's not as impossible as it sounds: www.universaldisplay.com/foled.htm refers.

Tell me about it. Only there do I get so many papers waved in my face. That's why all those papers end up on the Waterloo and City Line

Surely 'vendor' is the wrong word if they're giving the da*n things away. I'm trying to think of a better word....ideas??

Distributor is what comes to mind, although that implies the bulk movement of newspapers from the printers to the 'sale' point.

Nothing - but it's fun to moan about things anyway

I'll reply to this thread as someone who works in this neck of the woods, and therefore has a selection of facts to hand.

First off, I work for a national daily paper, not a freesheet. So my opinion is unbiased. Albeit suitably annoyed at the situation - as are a lot of fellow commuters - here are the raw figures:

For the ABC period February 2007, the daily average circulation figures for these freesheets (available at www.abc.org.uk/) are as follows:

London Lite: 400,977
thelondonpaper: 436,945

Rupert Murdoch's offering (tlp) is winning currently, mostly down to the fact that they've won the contract to distribute on the NR network.

It's all about advertorial revenues. Both companies are required by ABC rules (upon which they directly sell their ad space) to collect and record any undistributed copies on a daily basis. At the end of each month, these figures are audited. Hence the fact that you find large piles of said freesheets on buses: a copy dealt is a copy "sold" in ABC terms. All they see is the supervisor for any given area recording how many copies those damn vendors dare not to give out. And therefore recorded for ABC purposes. I’ve seen many vendors hopping on and off the D3 / D8 bus routes in the Wharf ditching 20 or so copies at a time. They all count as “sales” by audit standards.

But with no cover price, advertorial is the way forward for these freesheets. It’s a profit making industry. It works for both News International and Associated Newspapers. So don’t expect it so stop anytime soon!

As a disclaimer to the above, I don’t work in advertorial / editorial, I’m from somewhere else random within the tower. With a vested interest in the whole situation nonetheless. And still my usual curious self with regards to the intricacies of LU. Toodle pip!

I've been on a few buses lately where the driver has either flashed his lights/sounded his horn at the person giving these papers out and gestured for them to place more on the bus! The latest incident was on Monday night. There was already a stack of one of the freesheets, to which this individual added his (rival) offering.

If the figures quoted by Jimbo are right, that's 438,000 papers a day extra that have to be disposed of - be it by recycling or land fill or incineration - is this really the responsible way to behave?

RayB

Well, I do pick thelondonpaper from time to time which I make sure it ends up in the recycling bin outside my halls of residence at the end.

However, there is indeed the wider issue of recycling since tube carriages just after the morning peak is simply trashed with newspapers, and ditto for the evening.


I don't really find much wrong with what the cleaners do - except its the commuters who should be shoving them into the recycling bins themselves. As for fire hazard, yes it probably does create a bigger risk, only compounded by chavs which have resulted in the withdrawal (I'm assuming here) of fire extinguishers in tube carriages.