The terrors of illegal waste dumping
It is entirely true that the polluter should pay. That does though, unfortunately, rub up against the fact that some people are willing to break the law. Especially when easy money might be had by doing so. This is the problem which we face here:
‘You should gaze at your bins in horror’: the massive crime scandal behind the UK’s rubbish
Mafia types are taking over waste disposal:
But Mobuoy is only the beginning. “It’s not just there, it’s everywhere,” says Taylor. “There are massive illegal dumps all over the UK.” From low-level criminals offering to take waste away on the cheap then dumping it on illegal sites, right up to organised crime operations infiltrating legitimate waste disposal companies and gaining contracts, the result can be top-to-bottom criminality that then meets in the middle.
The cause of all of this is not hard to divine. We demand more recycling, to the extent that we demand the recycling of things where it is cheaper to dump than to recycle. Not an obviously sensible economic idea but that is what we currently do. We also insist - through the landfill tax - that there are substantial costs to shoving waste into a safe, managed and monitored hole in the ground. Therefore more people dump, more cheaply, onto fields and into unsafe, un-managed and un-monitored holes in the ground.
Yes, yes, what people should do but what is actually done? We’ve raised the costs of legal waste disposal. Therefore there is more illegal waste disposal. This should be no more surprising than dawn coming some hours after dusk - in fact, just as with that analogy, we’d be surprised if it didn’t happen.
Given that we can work out what is causing this despoilation of the countryside it’s therefore possible to grasp how to reverse it. Make it cheaper to dispose of waste legally and safely. Licence many more landfill sites - we dig up enough sand and gravel each year to make holes larger than required - and thereby reduce the price. Stop taxing legal disposal thereby making it more expensive than illegal. Stop insisting that uneconomic recycling is done. And then we’re done, mission accomplished.
We could, of course, carry on doing what we’re doing, ramping up the incentives for illegal dumping. But in the name of our verdant shores and green and pleasant land let’s not do that, eh? Instead, stick rubbish in safe and secure holes and actually solve the problem.