Would cost more to produce plates and set up the presses for that.

Screw the environmental motivations; except for niching, those a market do not make. Better reason is that smaller papers are easier to read on public transit, which means the papers increase their readership - both from existing readers as well as growing the market. This in turn creates better ad sales.

It also takes up less room.

In the main, avoiding waste strikes me as a marginal (sic) issue.

I would suggest some twist to this idea - offer to the subscribers newspapers with news and without advertisement. I, personnaly, would be willing to pay somewhat more in order to get a newspaper with e.g. 8 pages of news instead of 80 pages with mostly adds.

OK, maybe make other types of papers half-size (and two sided): documents printed out for archival purposes, rough drafts, college papers and reading packets, insurance policies, medical and legal records, etc. It's possible to make Microsoft Word print landscape format, two columns, eight-point, single space. Wouldn't this be a good paper-saving (and space-saving) standard? I know some weaker eyes need bigger type, but shouldn't the rest of us try to halve our paper use?

I would also like to be able to completely delete the SPORTS pages and SHARE PRICES pages appearing in THE HINDU. Its a waste of paper, waste of newsprint ink and waste of time turning the pages which I am sure I dont need. May be I can read it online in newspaper format itself?

recycle!

It's impossible to print without margins or gutters. Anything printed that has neither of these has had the excess paper mechanically trimmed. The extra space is often used for ink tests and registration (alignment) marks.