Please recycle this post when you've read it

How about Please Provide Some Fucking Recycling Bins Then You Large Media Owner?

I hate these bloody free papers. Really hate them. They are full of rubbish, they are cheap in every sense of the word and you can't move for the fucking mess they make.

And it really angers me that you can't get people to go to the trouble of spending 30-100 pence to read a decent newspaper with proper stories about the world, but give them a FREE one and they'll read puffed up press releases til the cows come home.

So where the hell am I supposed to recycle this thing? Am I expected to carry this object of no value around with me until I get to the recycling bin at work? If you're gonna preach about recycling the least you could do if provide one. Surely a great big recycling bin at every Tube station would be a Good Thing, a Useful Thing and a Media Space Opportunity Thing. I can't be the first person that's thought of that.

Richard once told me that HHCL / Red Cell once worked on some ideas for The London Paper. A product designer had the idea of putting a hole at the top and bottom of the paper so that when you folded it up it was easy to carry around. So you'd be more likely to carry it to work to recycle it. They also wanted to hang them papers inside the Tube carriages to encourage reuse.

So stop preaching and let's see some action.

Comments

[Matt]

A - effing -MEN

[lauren]

bra-f**king-vo..

[Adrian McEwen]

I think it's just fake environmental concern to go with the fake news.

[Ryan]

It really pisses me off that there's no bins for normal rubbish as well, but I've been told that bins present a security problem.

[nuzzaci]

Here in Stockholm they do provide with a large recycle bin. If above is London it might be due to security that they aren't any. Bin or no Bin — still a shit paper.

[Jesse]

While it's not the perfect solution, Boston (who's public transportation I take occasionally) has a crappy no-news-newspaper that they give out to riders, and then also canvas collection bags at each stop with a slot only big enough for a paper to fit through. They are large and green so it's hard to miss them.
It means you can't recycle anything but paper there, but it's a step. And it kind of addresses the security issue in a lazy sort of way.

[Jack]

Yep I share the same gripe. I tend to leave my copy on a bench somewhere in the station so either someone else can read it or in the (vain?) hope that the tube station actually recycles the hundreds of copies left there.

[javier]

thank you for these free lessons of design. I´ve become a fan of yor blog.
From Sapain, thanks again....

[samuelson]

I'm sure I'm wrong, but that blue metal thing under the poster... is that somewhere to pick up papers and therefore maybe put back papers that you've read? could that be what they mean by recycling?

[Amy]

Ah, the London free papers. As a colleague of mine commented, "The only thing you can get for free and still feel robbed."

[Sjors]

As far as I understood you are not able to recycle them in the station because of the fear that terrorist might make a bomb out of the recycled newspapers and blow them to pieces.

On some DLR stations (at least mine) there are transparent plastic bags for recycling.

But I do wonder, those paper printing companies, they surely have to pay a huge amount of money to be allowed to distribute their crap on the streets, and have the pavement blocked by paperboys and girls who block traffic?

[Paulo Condez]

lovely!!!

[Jonathan]

To be fair, the Metro isn't bad for a free newspaper, but the London Paper and London Lite are completely kack.

[one way photo / Mark]

I am glad someone else feels the same way as me about all these free papers... it makes me angry when I see so many people on my train reading them. I used to see everyone on my commute reading the Sun, which was bad enough, but now they all read the Metro in the mornings and the other 2 freebies in the evening.

A while ago I read Nick Davies' book Flat Earth News which goes into great detail about the puffed-up press releases you refer to. If only people knew what they were reading!

[Steve Price]

I couldn't agree more if I wanted too. I agree in part that The Metro is probably the best of the bunch, but even that is just full to the brim with articles 'recycled' from the previous evenings Daily Mail. You can eve seen the scan lines on some of images. Then, as you rightly point out, you end up with a paper-marche style nightmare (but without the necessary balloons) if the weather gets wet. Maybe they should do a massive recycle thing but all the papers go towards the worlds biggest paper-marche 'newspaper' - 300ft high replica of each of the newspapers, made from newspapers. Whose with me?

While we are on it, what about all the chicken bones left from the ever expandind fried chicken cottage joints that are scattered all over the buses? Better still actually fine and banish those that drop chicken bones/newspapers to, I don't know, say the Devils Crack?

[Matt Carter]

Yeah!.... I found a load of London Papers dumped in a public bin, obviously an 'employee' chucking the leftovers away at the end of the evening. Total waste!!.. and please, please, please can I just get from A to B without having a Lite / LP salesperson shoving their armfuls of trash in my face!!

[James Reeve]

I am totally with you on this one. Free papers are no more than glorified litter.

I also wish they would stop trying to give me one before I go home, I am not interested. I have to say "No thanks" to the say guy every day. I wish he would get the hint.