London’s two free evening newspapers face a West End ban within weeks unless the papers’ publishers and Westminster Council reach an agreement over a £500,000 recycling bill.
Associated Newspapers and News International, the media giants behind London Lite and thelondonpaper respectively, have been issued the ultimatum by the Central London council demanding that they both contribute to a two-year recycling scheme.
This follows the local authority’s claim that the 900,000 free newspapers distributed across the capital every weekday account for around one quarter of all waste collected. This mountainous pile of paper weighs in at approximately four tonnes per day.
“The council has been negotiating with the publishers of the London Paper and London Lite since January in an effort to tackle the sea of papers which are ending up in street waste,” a spokesperson for Westminster Council told The Guardian. “But so far neither News International nor Associated Newspapers has made a satisfactory offer which would significantly help meet the £500,000 set-up and running costs of a scheme to ensure the papers end up getting recycled.”
The publishers could be forgiven for feeling hard done by, given that neither paper currently makes a profit. Nevertheless, if talks between the two companies and the council break down, then the local authority will have the right to ban both papers under the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005.
