Fly-tipping in England has surged 38 per cent since 2010, new data shows, as the Environment Secretary promised to end the “blight on our towns, cities and beautiful countryside”.
Make disposing of rubbish legally more expensive and more people will dispose of rubbish illegally.
The problem people have with understanding this is what?
It’s not just that. It’s also the importation of hundreds of thousands of people from countries with rather different refuse disposal behaviour. And no ID, which is required to access the council tip.
As well as the nonsense of having to book in advance, as they have introduced down my way.
£4 to dispose of a bag of cement at my place. The first thing the chap said to me when I asked “how much” was “Don’t you know anyone with a skip ?”
@Otto, we just had a large skip for some building work and people threw random stuff into it. From a tent to a pram to takeaway containers. At least someone took the old gas fire out of the skip.
@Julia, Blackburn tips require ID. Reason given is because so many people from neighbouring councils use the tip. Very weak argument since the tip is miles from the boundary. Bloody awkward when you’ve just bought a property and need to empty out a hoarder’s contents and don’t have any proof (other than solicitors letter which the tip didn’t like) of “residence”.
‘… The problem people have with understanding this is what?…’
The same problem the same people have understanding you cannot replace coal fired, continuous, stable, dispatchable output power stations with intermittent, unstable, unreliable, non-dispatchable output wind turbines without causing increased electricity bills and power cuts.
Market failure due to externalities. Perhaps some regulation is required, Tim.
Council tax should cover refuse disposal without charges, if only the Councillors cut back on their wasteful actions.
E.g., I have just received a thick, colour-printed card through the post, informing me that my garden waste collection day will change next month from Thursday to Thursday!
Assuming every house received the same, that’s a lot of wasted tax which could have been put to some use. (Last time they did something similar but more minor, I requested the costs under FOI: it was over £6000.)
Although this is a small amount compared to their major wasteful actions, it’s indicative of their mindset and lack of concern for the people they are supposed to represent.
Only a few years ago my local waste tip just had two really big ‘bays’, one for household and one for garden waste. It was open 7 days a week. You backed up to the bay, emptied your car, and drove off.
Nowadays there are multiple bays for all sorts of types of rubbish (although not always what you want to ‘recycle’) and you have to drive from bay to bay. The waste tip is only open certain days of the week. You also have to pay for some types of waste too. The task of sorting the waste has been outsourced to the customer.
No wonder people fly tip.
In my area there is a Solid Waste Management fee added to your property tax bill. The dump is open for free during daylight hours all but a handful of holidays. Large disposal trucks pay a fee based on weight. Twice a month there is a hazardous waste disposal day for things like batteries, old paint and used motor oil. There is still fly tipping because someone gets to the dump after closing and doesn’t want to haul their trash home for the next day.
Funnily enough, I definitely recall thinking to myself a couple of decades ago that imposing charges to landfill waste would lead to fly tipping. Sure enough, it’s been a problem ever since then.
That the charging (or other disincentives such as limited tip opening times) has extended to domestic simply extended the problem. Who’d have thought it.
Perhaps the solution is to move the cost ? Most of what goes into the waste stream is part of something that’s been bought – so if we wish to reduce the amount of waste, perhaps the answer isn’t to tax getting rid of it (applies the market incentive in the wrong place, incentivises fly tipping etc.), but to tax the creation of it in the first place (e.g. tax the packaging something comes in, and tax the content that is likely to end up going to the tip). The latter creates an incentive on those creating the stuff that will end up as waste to minimise it.
As an example of totally avoidable waste, Mrs SBOtI recently bought some toys for the grand children – just simple cars. They come in cardboard boxes (OK, fair enough), with a clear plastic window (useful to see what sort of car is inside), but they are fixed in place with a piece of plastic held in place with two screws (hence of no use for anything once removed).
And don’t get me started on those plastic bits they fit on 13A plugs …
I work for a council in the West Riding. I work in the biggest dump of a ward of that council.
Fly tipping isn’t dumping stuff in a lay-by or a country road, it’s daily and everywhere in a city centre ward.
Yet said council will do the square root of bugger all. Despite the wardens and enforcement officers on massive salaries compared to the numpties like me and my team who actually pick the shite up…
And don’t bother asking the actual bin men to pick up a few black bin bags next to the wheelie bins…they’re not trained, but still get paid ’til 5pm Tuesday to Friday despite finishing at 2pm
With my neanderthal attitude to everything, I’d still argue for the good old home incinerator. Instead of polluting the landfill, the junk is immediately recycled into CO2, H2O and ash.
If Holy Mother Gaia had only done this millions of years ago, all that horrid oil and coal would have been recycled long before we turned up.
Of course, one could argue that we’re Gaia’s answer to this problem, so we should dig, drill and burn, burn, burn!!!!
@SadButMadLad
The skip ‘bring and take shop’ – yes, I’ve skip dived. Also posted on Freeglw etc when something good in skip eg kids bicyle, pram… and recieved “Got it, thanks” replies