Litter or recycling?

I have been watching an interesting phenomenon on the train recently: people littering, and doing so completely free of guilt. Here's what they do: as they finish a section of the newspaper, they fold it up, and drop it on the floor under their seat. I have seen this happen a few times, and finally asked this guy who had just dropped the financial section of the Chronicle under a BART seat. His response: he was leaving it for someone else to read. I asked him if he got it off the floor originally, and he said no. So I asked the next Larry David-esque question: would you ever pick up a newspaper off the floor of the train? He looked at me like I was being a jerk (he was partially right, in that I broke a cardinal rule of transit ettiquette: don't speak. However, I really did wonder if he would), and then got off at his stop without answering.

Interesting.