Don't leave your paper behind. Really?

On many of the buses I catch in and around Tyneside, there are copies of the free 'paper  Metro. which, presumably the bus companies receive an adnvertising payment for allow to be placed on their buses. At the same time, a number of buses have a public notice ´Don't leave your paper behind. Take it with you and recycle it´ In some notices, leaving your paper behind is said to be littering.

 

I think there are some problems with this.  It's a free as in 'giveaway' newspaper. It is offered at the front of the bus in such a way as to encourage people to pick it up and read it on their journey. In many cases passengers will have read as much as they wish by the time their journey ends and not wish to take it with them. I suspect that many of us almost instinctievly feel that leaving it on your seat to be picked up by another passenger is a neighbourly thing to do (though dropping it on the floor isn't). There's an interesting issue about 'ownership' involved here. The notices seem to imply that picking up a paper makes it yours.

 I think the psychology of picking up a free paper on public transport is that it is often felt to be a public good not a private possession, or at least it might only become a private possession once you put it in your bag or carry it off the bus or train, until that time it is still potentially re-placeable in the public domain and, in fact, to do so is a public good of neighbourliness because you are making the service of news and entertainment available to others. Thus it is not littering: it is recirculating.  This is something to be encouraged, surely? Even the advertisers in said 'paper would agree -albeit for different reasons: they would like more eyeballs to take in the product. 

A win-win situation?

Maybe, but not quite: there is the pesky problem posed by the non-co-operators: those who don't want to take it off the bus for their own consumption but also think it more amusing or that it is somehow acceptable simply to throw it on the floor and walk on it ... problem of the commons?