Tabloid trash

Dear Clover,

Everyday I ride the dirty unkept City Rail trains. I love trains, but the way the entire City Rail system is not cleaned – seats are torn, terrible lighting, dirty floors, walls and hand rails – I consider them an environmental pollutant.

I also find the MX Newspapers strewn around every day on the trains and stations to be a big part of that pollution. Besides the waste of paper (how many trees are used?), the waste of human resources, and the underhanded marketing game, it is also the pollution of paper I see every day that is clearly wrong and unnecessary.

I don’t understand why you allow these newspaper operators to literally throw out thousands of these pieces of pollution everyday at Town Hall, Wynyard, Martin Place, Central, St James, Museum and Circular Quay, yet you and your Council ban wall posters on the premise that they are polluting the environment. These wall posters have some artistic creativity, often serve the less well off artists and are not just serving the games of the rich corporations in their marketing plans. How many people are employed by the State or Council to clean these up?

Both actions – allowing MX magazine and the banning of street posters – would indicate that you wholly support the large advertising media groups – JC Decaux, News Corp – rather than any desire for a less wasteful and polluted environment.

John Ferris, Strawberry Hills