If you are unimpressed by another free newspaper in Regina, three quarters of which is full of celebrity gossip, bad recipes, advertisements, and world news that you already hear about in several other mediums, then please consider doing the following.

• Read the below letter. If you agree with it, please copy and paste it and email it to both Verb newspaper and Metro newspaper in Regina at the below email addresses. If you don’t agree with it, please let me know, or feel free to write a letter of your own expressing your thoughts on the new explosion of green and orange newspaper boxes in the city.

• When the huge, impersonal, Associated-Press-written newspaper shrugs off several emails as negligible, which will inevitably happen, then start sending the emails daily. From each of your email addresses. Express your feelings to the workers distributing the paper. Start a Facebook page for it, since that seems to be the only way to get shit done these days.

• After several weeks of our requests being denied, I plan to take time out of my schedule or whenever I am walking from one place to another, to pick up garbage from the streets and to promptly place it in the nearest receptacle that there is, which, based on the sparsity of garbage bins and the entire absence of recycling bins, will certainly be a green Metro bin. Although I understand that this is simply making the jobs of a few select employees more difficult, it cleans up our streets. I would invite you to do the same until either the city or the newspapers in the city provides one receptacle for every three green Metro bins, a request that I believe is very reasonable. I plan to inform both Metro and Verb of my intention to use their bins as garbage cans. Until they begin to act as responsible members of our community, they are not welcome.

Let’s cut the bullshit. We don’t need three more advertisement-driven ‘newspapers’ to read, let alone to visually pollute our city. The very least they can do is to reduce the amount of tumour-causing bins that we see. Being barraged with paper isn’t an inevitability of being a growing city.

To Whom it May Concern,

Regina has recently been the target of a surge of new, free, physical newspapers and magazines. Each of these media are a good source of news, culture, art and information that is encouraging to see in a growing city, however with more print-based media comes more waste, as well as the issue of disposing of this waste properly. Regina currently does not have a city-wide recycling program, however this is to be implemented in the upcoming year.

As one of Canada’s largest free newspapers, your commitment should be more than providing news stories, it should be to the health of the cities that you serve. The health of the global community, one which you connect through your medium, depends greatly on organizations like yours. Regina is a small city that is transitioning to become one of Canada’s strongest. Growing pains include, but are not limited to, unreliable public transit, a lack of a city-run recycling program, a housing crisis, and, as is evident anytime one walks downtown, a lack of garbage bins, but more importantly, recycling bins. As a new part of this growing city, I would challenge your organization to assist in the growing problem of litter by placing recycling and garbage bins throughout the city. Being a daily newspaper, the amount of waste is evident and although it is understandable in the first several weeks or months of distributing in a new city, such a process needs to be done more responsibly. The fabled “3 R’s”, in order, are Reduce, Reuse and Recycle, and although you may encourage the latter two, you have obviously completely missed the first and most important of the three. Your newspaper is an inevitable source of litter in the city which makes you doubly responsible to assist in the cleaning of the city and offering proper waste receptacles. I would also suggest a major review of your number of distribution boxes throughout the city, noticing that a reduction of these boxes based on foot traffic and transit locations is a necessary step, rather than saturating the city scape with unnecessary boxes full of untouched papers.

Please consider reducing the amount of distribution boxes that you have throughout the city, or be responsible and offer proper receptacles for the waste that you are creating. One waste receptacle per three distribution boxes seems like a reasonable ratio at which to begin.

I would ask that you please consider this as a priority if you are sincerely interested in being a part of this great and growing community. Unsightly bins and unparalleled waste is not an inevitable step in the growth of a city. Responsibility and accountability are. 

Thank you for your time.

Nicholas Olson

Metro
Regina_distribution@metronews.ca
regina@metronews.ca

Verb
feedback@verbnews.com
jlutz@verbnews.com (Office Manager)
vpaley@verbnews.com (Marketing Manager)