Neil Grundon, Chairman of Grundon, says better use of technology and having ‘feet on the ground’ is the best way to beat fly-tipping.
When the Environment Agency (EA) recently published its list of over 100 ‘high risk’ waste sites, my first thought was ‘is that all?’
My second was ‘how much is that costing’ – and I don’t just mean in terms of the clean-up operations, I mean in lost government revenue.
By my calculations, the almost 1.9 million tonnes of dumped rubbish alluded to by the EA at these sites alone would, at the current standard landfill tax rate of £130.75 per tonne, equate to nearly £247,000,000 – or put more simply, a quarter of a billion pounds – missing from the tax kitty.
Of course, I’m not naive enough to think that the people dumping this waste are going to drive a few extra miles to their nearest recycling centre and pay their taxes. As we know, waste criminals (whether that be organised crime syndicates or chancers conning folk by offering to get rid of their waste on the cheap) don’t care about anything other than making the highest price in the quickest possible time.
As the EA itself admits, more widely, there are currently around 700 known illegal waste sites across England, and it has already set out plans to tackle the issue, citing a strategy that (amongst others) includes faster intelligent handling and a more consistent response; the creation of a new Operational Waste Intelligence and Analysis Unit; and naming operators involved in illegal activity.
That’s all very well, but I believe the EA could take a much more proactive approach by swapping report writing with better use of technology and sending its permitting and enforcement teams out in the field more often.
I believe it is only when people see these waste abominations for themselves that they realise the true scale and level of the large-scale criminality being perpetuated.
Instead, what we are seeing is reputable, established companies like ourselves facing an ongoing struggle of more and more regulations and hoops to jump through – enforcing things that don’t need to be enforced while not taking action on the things that do.
I also think that the general public and businesses need to take a long, hard look at what they do with their waste.
It’s created in someone’s home, someone’s business premises, someone’s building site, and the responsibility lies partly at their front door too – to coin a phrase, ‘just say no’ to unscrupulous waste collectors. It takes just a minute or two to check an operator’s licence – isn’t that worth it if it helps keep the countryside clean?
Thankfully, there are plenty of people and organisations (ourselves included) who do care about the environment and desperately want to help rid our countryside of the scourge of fly-tippers.
Unfortunately, it’s often an uncoordinated, isolated and under-supported effort, which is why I think we need a collective approach to tackle waste crime and bring back some good ‘old-fashioned’ civic pride.
Look at what proactive campaigning has done to help hold the water industry to account over sewage being dumped in our rivers, lakes and seas – this is the power of the people, the citizen scientists who know they can make a difference.
I’ve been following the work of the campaigning group Clean Up Britain, which is doing a great job of attracting both widespread attention in the corridors of power and in the media around the issue of fly-tipping.
The group says its mission is: ‘To end the cycle of environmental neglect by challenging inaction, demanding accountability, and inspiring a culture of personal and collective responsibility.’ And that sums it up perfectly.
Earlier this year, it launched a campaign to raise £100,000 to install 200 hidden enforcement cameras and warning signage in fly-tipping hotspots, and I think that’s a brilliant idea.
Perhaps we should look at recruiting a ‘citizen army’ to keep track of such activities. Local communities will usually be the first to know when waste is illegally dumped; sometimes, they may even see it happening.
Utilising technologies like hidden trail cameras that identify car number plates and faces of the perpetrators takes away fears of confrontation and provides actual evidence for the enforcement agencies. Even better if those videos can be posted on social media so those individuals know they are being watched and reported.
Sadly, though, even when fly tippers are caught, they seem to get away with not much more than a slap on the wrist. I read recently about one case where two men had dumped fly-tipped waste in a remote rural lane – one had visited the site some 50 times in less than 10 weeks, and the other had advertised on Facebook as a waste collector, despite not holding a valid waste carrier’s licence – yet they were each issued with community protection warnings and fined £400.
I try not to despair when I see things like that, but stronger deterrents must surely be the way forward too.
As the EA says (and for once I agree), it cannot address waste crime alone.
We do need a much more joined-up approach, we need those citizen armies and those campaigning groups, we need investment in technology, we need politicians to listen.
Like many of our peers, we already provide bins, bags and volunteers to help clean up our countryside. As an industry, we are playing our part – let’s all put feet on the ground (yes, I mean the EA too) and get this job done.