Name: Fly-tippers.
Age: As old as rubbish.
Appearance: Shadowy, fleeting, profoundly antisocial.
I know who you mean: the fiends who dumped a dozen old mattresses at the back of the park. Yes, but not just them. There were 1.08m fly-tipping incidents in England in 2022-23, with clearance costing councils £13.2m.
Disgusting. What is to be done? The time has come, says the Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi, “to start taking much more draconian action” against all illegal dumpers.
All? Even ordinary litterers? The difference between littering and fly-tipping lies chiefly in amounts. The most common size of fly-tipping incident councils dealt with in 2022-23 was the “small vanload”.
Phew! So this isn’t about someone just hanging a dog-poo bag in a tree. Have you done that?
I was coming back for it! The two crimes are definitely related, but Lady Warsi has likened attempts to tackle the country’s litter problem while fly-tipping goes unpunished to “mopping whilst the tap is on”.
I agree: go after the big fish, not someone who sometimes leaves perfectly nice furniture on the pavement for people to take for nothing. That’s known as “middle-class fly-tipping”.
It’s more of a public service when you think about it. It’s still putting rubbish in the street.
It’s not rubbish! It just doesn’t go with the new carpet. People do get fined for that, but we’re more concerned with repeat offenders dumping construction waste in laybys.
Good. How do we catch them? Increasingly, we shall know them by their number plates: the campaign group Clean Up Britain has already installed 87 cameras in fly-tipping hotspots across 19 counties.
And how do we punish them? Warsi believes that in addition to other fines, fly-tippers and litterers could be given three penalty points on their driving licences.
Harsh. She even suggests that number-plate recognition could be used to trace discarded packaging back to the people who threw it from their cars.
I like this idea – it makes a distinction between people who use vehicles in the commission of their reprehensible dumping, and those of us who innocently leave out the odd ironing board or the occasional occasional table. What do you do if no one takes it? Just leave it there to rot?
Of course not. I have a neighbour with a van who carts it all away for 20 quid. And what does he do with it?
Best not to ask, I find. That figures.
Do say: “The stewardship of our shared environment is everyone’s responsibility.”
Don’t say: “Free to take: child’s swing, DVDs, half-tonne damaged drywall, six mattresses, assorted rubble.”
