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Improving the environmental impact of newspapers is a priority for newspaper publishers, with recent actions including some publishers removing all single-use plastic wrapping and replacing it with compostable wrapping, and other committing to reduce significantly the carbon footprint of their businesses.
January 2019 saw the Guardian become the first national newspaper to use recyclable packing, adopting a compostable wrap called Bioplast 300 for their weekend supplements. In June 2019 The Times and The Sunday Times also started using compostable film, and in October of the same year The Sun Weekend TV magazine removed its inner plastic polybagging across the UK and Irish editions, removing 350 tonnes of single-use plastic per year from the Saturday issue. In September 2020, News UK announced recyclable paper banding for newspaper magazines would be phased into titles across all regions of the UK by mid-October, the final piece of News UK’s pledge to remove all single-use plastic used to wrap its titles and inner magazines.
The news media industry has long embraced environmental sustainability and has a voluntary agreement with the government on the recycled content of UK newspapers. In 1991, the UK publishers set a target of achieving 40% recycled content in newspapers by the millennium. This target was met 4 years ahead of schedule. In 2019, the recycled paper content of UK newspapers was just over 63%, and the combined recycled/certified fibre content ratio stands at 95%.
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