project freesheet

The candidates for London's Mayoral elections have been setting out their vision for a more positive response to the current free newspaper crisis.

Gerard Batten, Siân Berry, Alan Craig, Lindsey German, Boris Johnson, Ken Livingstone, Matt O'Connor and Brian Paddick have all received this letter from Project Freesheet.

Brian Paddick (Lib Dem) feels that "free newspapers should have to pay all of the costs associated with the rubbish they cause. This may encourage them to deal more responsibly with the waste they create"

Siân Berry (Green Party) responded very firmly by saying "We are committed to ensuring there is 100% recycling of all free newspapers given out at stations and we are committed to providing much better recycling facilities at all rail and tube stations. We are also committed to ensuring the distributors pay the full clean-up costs of their activities. We support on-the-spot fines for littering, more obligations for publishers and all other business to collect and recycle their own waste and penalties for print over-runs"

Gerard Batten MEP (UKIP candidate) responded as follows - "the free newspaper owners cannot escape responsibility for the waste problems they create" and he went on to say "I would consider any measure that made the publishers and distributors of free newspapers responsible for the costs of collecting and recycling their own waste products."

More interesting though was his idea to help increase rates of recycling the free papers - "I would also consider imaginative initiatives such as hiring the army of Big Issue sellers in the capital for a week or two to collect the discarded copies, and to put them into lorries for delivery back to the offices of the publishers"

The press office of Alan Craig of the Christian Peoples Alliance, responded as follows - "Alan was struck by the facts you set out in your letter - particularly the failure to recycle the freesheets. Alan would like to invite Project Freesheet to meet him in the Assembly to discuss how your proposals can be implemented at borough level and by business."

Meanwhile Boris Johnson (Conservative) said "I absolutely agree with you on this issue, recycling in London is a problem that needs to be tackled head on and not ignored... Should I be elected Mayor I will work with the publishers of these free newspapers to come to a proper arrangement that ensures they take responsibility for the amount of waste they are producing on a daily basis."