The London Paper and London Lite have been blamed for creating four tonnes of discarded newsprint every day, The Guardian newspaper reported on Tuesday.

The city's local government authority, the Westminster Council, gave both papers' publishers a 30-day ultimatum to find a way to clear the streets of piles of freesheets discarded by readers after scanning through them.

The London Paper is owned by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch while the London Lite is owned by Associated Newspapers. Both have a combined daily circulation of more than 900,000 copies.

The council added that it spent £111,000 (S$340,000) a year to clear the streets of the paper mountains.

Several months of negotiations with the publishers failed to produce an agreement. The council had proposed that the papers pay for 150 recycling boxes and a truck to empty them.

The fall-out between the council and the publishers came after the latter refused to share the costs of clearing the streets of London voluntarily, having failed to find a way to get their readers to recycle the freesheets.

On Tuesday, the council voted to cut distribution of the newspapers by 30 per cent in the West End theatre district alone.

The zones in the city most blighted by discarded freesheets are around Charing Cross, Embankment and Victoria Tube stations, Charing Cross Road, Leicester Square and Oxford Circus.

The freesheets, both introduced last year, are handed out by vendors across the city each weekday afternoon.

'We simply cannot afford to let the problem of waste newspapers defacing our streets continue,' Mr Alan Bradley, a Westminster councillor, said in an e-mailed statement.

If the council's proposals are implemented, both papers would also need permits to distribute freesheets in these areas unless the two papers organised their own litter-picking and recycling drives.

The restrictions are in force under Britain's 2005 Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act, the council said.

The council's latest move comes after months of negotiations failed to reach a financial agreement acceptable to both publishers.

It hoped the new measures will force the publishers to return to talks to reach a voluntary agreement about recycling their waste.

The BBC quoted Mr Bradley as saying that the proposal gave the council the authority to get a grip on the wastage issue.

The Guardian reported that both publishers are confident they can cobble a deal with the council before the 30-day deadline is up.

Mr Ian Clark, general manager of The London Paper, said the company wants to work with city councils to encourage readers to recycle papers rather than dump them in garbage cans or on the street.

'I'm pretty positive we will be able to find a solution,' Mr Clark said.

But the council said the anti-wastage rules would not affect the distribution of political, religious or charity pamphlets.

BLOOMBERG