If you’ve ever boarded a Tube train after it has reached the end of its line and is preparing to make the return journey, you will have had the experience of wading knee-deep in London’s best cat tray liners – the freesheets. Folded neatly on every seat, splayed across every square inch of floor space and perched haphazardly on every ledge are those peons of journalistic greatness, the Metro, thelondonpaper and London Lite. Together they form a formidable mountain of rubbish, in more ways than one.
Green campaigners, keen to highlight the vastness of the problem, gathered up 1500 copies of the freesheets discarded by Tube passengers and piled them up in Trafalgar Square for display before carting them off to a recycling centre. Their aim was to demonstrate to the public how their lazy litterbug tendencies impact the environment and contribute to landfill overspill. The freesheets produce 3-4 tonnes of waste on a daily basis.
Instead of throwing your paper away or leaving it on a train, perhaps you could try one of these alternative uses for it, or come up with your own, such as:
• Putting it above your eyeline to successfully ignore that pregnant woman or elderly man in need of a seat
• Using it to thwack any would-be thieves who try to steal your wallet or iPod
• Creating concentric circles with the bottom of your pint glass while waiting for mates to join you in the pub
• Using it as a pigeon poo shield when walking underneath a particularly lengthy railway bridge
• Taping it over your telly for the duration of Big Brother
• Plugging holes in your tent at Glastonbury
• Playing drinking games: every time you read the words ‘travesty’, ‘outrage’, ‘nanny state’ or ‘ASBOs’, take a healthy swig. You’ll be pissed in no time.
The possibilities are endless, really, so be creative. If you mess about with rubbish, you may even come up with an Olympic logo!
Photo courtesy of floongle's photostream
