Westminster sets ultimatum over free newspaper waste

The council has so far failed to get the publishers of the London Lite and TheLondonPaper to contribute towards recycling services for their newspapers, of which up to 900,000 are handed out free every day in Greater London.

It says Westminster taxpayers are paying £111,000 a year to deal with the “deluge”, with some areas of the West End seeing the papers accounting for a quarter of street litter.

After a meeting last night, the publishers have been given one month to agree to a voluntary collection scheme.

At present, more than 1,000 tonnes of free newspapers dropped in the London borough each year have to go to landfill. This is because they are overly contaminated with other types of litter, while Westminster's contracted capacity to use the SELCHP incinerator is already fully used.

Last night saw the city council's cabinet voting to approve a plan to force the newspaper publishers to undertake collection activities in four main problem areas of the borough, including areas around Victoria Station, Oxford Street and Leicester Square.

London Lite is published by the Daily Mail & General Trust, while TheLondonPaper is part of News International, owners of The Sun and The Times.

The “voluntary” plan would see at least 30% of the waste picked up by the newspaper distributors, Westminster council believes.

Restrictions

If the publishers do not accept, the council could require a reduction in newspaper distribution points, restrictions on distributors “aggressively thrusting papers onto members of the public”, or even the setting up of zones where it would be illegal to hand out free newspapers or leaflets without a permit.

Westminster would also require litter-picking activities to be undertaken within a 100-metre radius of all distribution points.

The action is being taken under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act. However, one potential flaw to the plan is that under the legislation, Westminster cannot force the publishers to recycle collected newspapers.

Cllr Alan Bradley, Westminster's cabinet member of street environment, said following last night's meeting: “This proposal gives us the authority to forcibly tackle the issue of waste if the voluntary agreement fails. However, I hope both publishers will be eager to ensure that the voluntary agreement works and we will be monitoring its effectiveness closely.

“We simply cannot afford to let the problem of waste newspapers defacing our streets continue and our residents, businesses and visitors rightly expect the streets not to be left strewn with a mountain of discarded newspapers. We strongly believe that the publishers have a clear duty to ensure their product does not deface our city,” he said.

Westminster collects 20,000 tonnes of street litter each year, and increased the number of newspaper recycling bins to 131 last August in response to the free newspapers. Council officers believe the littered newspapers have effectively taken off 1% from the city council's recycling rate.

The city council has been through months of negotiations within the publishers already, originally proposing that each newspaper should sponsor 150 recycling points and a vehicle to empty them. However, the council could not gain agreement with both newspaper publishers.

Newspaper publishers within the UK already undertake a voluntary producer responsibility agreement with the government – to use certain levels of recycled newsprint within their newspapers, which current stands at 70% by the end of 2006. Actual recycled content of British newspapers was in the region of 80.3% during 2005, according to Defra.