By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Ten million (10,000,000) tons of newspapers are still tossed into landfills in the United States, according to reports, and I am certain that Britain and the rest of the European Union are not far behind that figure.
That is an awful lot of paper, and thus tree matter, which could either be recycled, and if only for shredded paper as animal bedding, or which, better still, would not even be generated as waste.
Who really, in today's world, still needs to read newspapers on dead trees, that is to say, on paper printed? Still we do, I know.
In London we get a fair number of free – to the reader at least – newspapers such as the Metro, which is distributed as railways and underground stations, an FT Lite, and in the afternoon distributed on the streets, the Evening Standard.
If I am in London, I must say, I do often pick up a couple of them. They do often give me some food for an article or two, though I never seem to find the time and opportunity to read them properly on the train; I am too busy reading books for review.
But as to news, unless local, which again comes via (a) free (local) newspaper(s), I do not use paper versions of newspapers in any way, shape or form. I cannot see a reason for them and have no use for them, in this digital age.
It is, therefore, strange to see, to me at least, that still there are so many newspapers going out to the punters. How many, I wonder, do actually get read in any proper way?
With an RSS reader subscription – which cost nothing – most news is instantly available to read online or, with the right software, to turn into a storable document format for reading later, or even printing, if so desired, such as PDF.
The same is true for magazines. I don't subscribe to any of them anymore – bar the one that comes with my membership of the Forestry Society – as I can get most of the material that I would want to read a specialist magazine for online from a variety of sources.
Yes, true, some material is behind a “pay wall” but then, well, that does not bother me either for there is always somewhere else where the same information or news article is found for free.
Coming back to the issue of ten million tons of newspapers in landfills, however. Here we have a case in point where, as weaning people off the paper is not going to be that quick, recycling comes in and where the municipalities need to do more to recycle the papers, even if only for animal bedding.
© 2011
