Dublin City Council has said it may prosecute the publishers and distributors of the freesheets Metro and Herald AM if they fail to contribute towards the cost of collecting and recycling discarded issues of the newspapers.
Both newspapers are distributed free to commuters on public transport routes and at road junctions on the way into Dublin on weekdays.
Herald AM is published by Independent News and Media while Metro is published by Fortunegreen Ltd, a joint venture involving Associated Newspapers and The Irish Times Ltd.
Dublin City Council, which has already had discussions with the publishers of the papers, said its recently adopted Waste Management Plan now made it a statutory requirement that "litter issues", which it claims are caused by the papers, be addressed.
The assistant city manager in charge of waste management, Matt Twomey, said yesterday that under the Waste Management Act it was not just those who disposed of the newspapers who were responsible, but the publishers and distributors as well. "It is our view that they could all be prosecuted," he said.
The cost to the city of cleaning up waste newspaper is €500 per tonne when it is left out in "green box" containers. But according to Mr Twomey, the cost of collecting papers from the traditional street bins is double that. The city council sends newspapers to Shotten in Wales for recycling. He said an offer by publishers to supply segregated newspaper bins was unsatisfactory.
The managing director of Metro, Lee Thompson, said Metro had encountered "the potential for litter" here as well as other countries and had taken steps to avoid it. Pat Walsh, of Murray Consultants, spokesman for Independent News and Media, said the publishers of Herald AM were in constructive discussions with the city council and had a key focus on litter prevention.
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