fly tipping in the uK

This week Panorama covered this topic. I wrote to the guy featured in the programme with a couple of suggestions, but no reply.

MOnica is correct.

I’m not saying she isn’t. Just that the system makes no sense.

We walk regularly along a downland river. We park on a flood plain and there is a sequence of gullies to drain the water away into the river. They are sparkling clear and used hugely by all sorts of wildlife. Near the car park is one which is used extensively by coots and moorhens with dear little chicks in the spring. Last year some idiot dumped a load of builders rubbish into the gully and completely ruined the water quality and habitat.

Fly tipping is a thoughtless and destructive thing.

Paying for the privilege is right as the council has to deal with hazardous substances in order to protect our soil and environment.

MOnica is correct. That is now the system at our local recycling plant. There is an ever-growing list of charges for your rubbish. When my eldest daughter lived in the outskirts of Leeds many years ago, about every 3 months the council used to put a few skips on a patch of waste ground for the local community to use. There was no cost to the residents and no fly-tipping either. Whatever the council paid for the skips must have been much less than clearing fly-tipping, I should imagine. I always thought it was a great idea.

I know it doesn't, but it does explain a lot of fly-tipping.

DD2 and her family live very close to the border between two local authorities. The tip for one of them is practically at the bottom of their street, the other a 15 minute drive away. They're only allowed to use the one for their authority. Guess which one it is?

Take a tin of paint to the tip, you pay £1.50. Take 5 tins and it is £7.50. We took a lttle wooden toboggan DH made for our children years ago. The man lookes at it, said 'Did you make that?' Yes, says DH proudly - £1.50 to pay said tip attendant. Yet we would not have been charged if the toboggan had been a bought plastic one

I'm gobsmacked, M0nica. That makes no sense whatsoever!

Our tip has a corner where they place items in good condition that have been dumped, decent pieces of furniture, There were a couple of really nice bicycles there today.

I ave never taken anything from a tip without the knowledge of the tip operatives. I am not sure what they do is strictly legal, but I am often appalled at the things people take to the tip that have plenty of life left in them and could be Freegled, given to a charity shop, or even put in an auction sale.

Our local tip/recycling centre is about two miles away it is very organised and the staff are really helpful. Yet on the way to the tip/recycling centre are country lanes often strewn with rubbish. It appalls me that the council provide us with a really good centre but lazy booooods just dump rubbish anywhere.
While dropping my children at school I often told parents off for allowing their children to drop litter. It’s my two pet hates that I can’t stand by and watch in silence.

midgey - so it's the owner of the rubbish who is liable in law.
But when are they going to be found and brought to court when there are so mny more serious cases waiting?

Actually it is illegal to take stuff from a skip without permission! At our tip you are not allowed to take things unless you can get the ‘thrower out’ pretty quickly.

I find this a fascinating topic - very upsetting to see beautiful natural environments defaced by our modern need to keep buying new. The sea also.
The best way is to look for identification of the person who dumped the rubbish and return it to him/her. But with the huge volume now, it's impossible.
The problem has been going on for a long time - we used to live near the Humber and walking on the foreshore you could see remains of domestic waste embedded in the banks.
And in France while digging in the garden we found all sorts. Once a baby's carrycot and covers - thankfully no baby remains inside!

On our local Facebook page, registered scrap dealers are often posting saying they will collect stuff.

Not fridges and freezers though, at least not for free, as they have to pay to dispose of them.

I'm all for frugal living.
That doesn't stretch to paying the council to get rid of other people's shyte.
They could put it outside their own homes, and if I saw anything I fancied I would go and get it myself.

Perhaps they think that one of you may want to rescue the funiture for their own use. Dumper diving is a perfectly respectable way of acquiring things. As I mentioned above we have rescued and bought things at the tip.

DD recently replaced her cooker. Here previous cooker was defunct and this was obvious at a glance. She left it on her drive, close to the road and within 24 hours someone had rung her doorbell and asked if they could have it. She was fairly sure it was a local scrap dealer. One of our neighbours is moving tomorrow and they have been putting stuff by their gate for people to help themselves to.

We have the people from the private houses opposite us fetching their wardrobes and mattresses and leaving them beside our bins, and if they're going to magically disappear.

Actually Missfoodlove we have driven 200 miles to York to dump something there that they would accept and our local tip wouldn't. We all so fitted in a visit to DS and family!

We have to prove we live in the catchment area for our (civic amenity site) tip!
As if we would decide to drive 30 miles to York and dump there, or perhaps Harrogate on a nice day. FFS.
Just make it easier for everyone.
In areas of our city with a high concentration of immigrants the tipping and litter is awful as they often don’t have the means to get to a tip.
The council should just put the huge waste bins out in these neighbourhoods like they do on the continent.

The tip is a whole new ball game here.
All kinds of rules, a charge for driving anything bigger than a car..
Which in turn has taken away any profit for the men who would genuinely take take your rubbish to the tip for a small charge.

Yes, we used to do that, we acquired a magnificent carved sideboard that way. It is in our house in France and is much admired by our neighbours.

We also acquired some toys, a tricycle and several dolls. They all came home and were throughly cleaned and soaked in disinfectant. I dressed several of the dolls and gave them to a charity shop.

GagaJo our local tip has a large shed they use for exactly that.

In one of the areas I used to live in, they had a recycling area at the council dump. Anything the council workers deemed saleable would go in there. It was a treasure trove for renovators (it's called upcycling now). I had several things from it that I took home and restored to use. The council workmen would charge a nominal rate. I got a very good, solid, wooden chest of drawers from it. And the bonus was, the workers were so pleased to trouser a little cash, they'd load it into your car.

I was just thinking; I suppose people with a mindset to just dump what they don't want probably don't care if they can pay someone else to do it.

I've always thought the council could provide a truck once a month, where people can take out one or two bulky items for £5 or £10.

MissAdventure

You can also, in all good faith, pay what seems to be a legitimate person to take your bulky items to dispose of, and they then go and dump your waste.

That’s why one should check if they have the proper licences to deal with waste. I assume they have to deal with it correctly then.

I think it would be cheaper for councils to provide big skips in designated areas of the town every so often, for people to put bulky items in, this worked well in an area on our regional news a while ago. Surely better and cheaper than stuff being fly tipped.

MOnica in our neck of the woods if you leave your paint to dry out you can put it in your non recycling bin.
I hadn’t heard that they had changed the rules but it is a while since I took any.
They have a couple of paint waste days here twice a year.