Fly-tipping powers can go even further
New powers and policy announced today, targeting organised illegal waste disposal gangs who dump rubbish wherever they please, is more than welcome, however, it does not go far enough in two distinct ways.
First of all, the additional £45m being given over to the Environment Agency by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to pay for its Waste Crime Action Plan will not touch the sides. Fly-tipping is taking place on an industrial scale across the country, leading experts to surmise that for criminals, it is becoming as lucrative as the drugs trade – which its activities often support.
Overall, the environmental, social and economic cost of this scourge is estimated at £1bn annually; clearly more needs to be done to crack down on the unscrupulous bogus waste traders who are treating Yorkshire’s countryside as their own private, profitable landfill site.
As well as cracking down on those rogue traders by forcing them to complete hours of unpaid work as well as charging them for the clean-up bill left behind by their littering, attention should turn to educating and punishing people who are choosing to pay cash-in-hand to individuals and to businesses of ill or no repute.
For without the work given to these unprincipled crooks, often by people who know all-too-well that their rubbish will more than likely end up polluting the countryside, there is no incentive to violate the highways and byways of the county. Where it can be established that people engaging fly-tipping gangs have done so knowingly, those people too should be subject to the same naming and shaming.