London's Project Freesheet

If you've been in a major city in the last few years, you've experienced the phenomenon of free mini newspapers now being handed out as a new strategy for newspapers to sell advertising. I'm willing to bet that, you, like me, had a certain thought at least cross your mind as you saw all the discarded papers piling up: "Wow, what a waste."

Free newspaper circulation now accounts for 30% of the European newspaper market, and 8% of the World newspaper market. Since 2001 free daily newspaper circulation has more than tripled from 12 million to over 40 million worldwide. That is a percentage increase of over 340% in 6 years. This equates to the use of over 9000 trees (allowing for 75% recycled content) every day.

Well, finally, an organized response is just beginning and its emerging as a London petition effort called Project Freesheet.

From the website: Project Freesheet is a web based campaign to highlight issues and concerns raised by the ever increasing amount of free literature (aka "freesheets") now being handed out on the streets of our cities around the world. By encouraging the public to upload and send in their photos of free literature waste we aim to illustrate the excesses of the free literature publishers through the creation of a visual petition (see the collage) Project Freesheet will continue to exist for as long as freesheet publishers continue to disregard their responsibilities to our streets and the environment. We will campaign about the negative impact of freesheets for as long as products with such questionable environmental credentials are produced