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- The UK’s Environment Agency calls waste crime – where instead of recycling or delivering waste for proper disposal, companies dump it in the countryside – the “new drug” because it’s so easy to make money illegally.
- It is estimated that one in five UK waste companies operate this way, and the government seems powerless to stop it.
- In a three-part, “True Eco-Crime” series for Mongabay’s podcast, investigative journalists explore England’s massive illegal waste problem.
- On this second episode, a lawyer describes his year-long campaign to get the government to deal with a single illegal dump site, but they failed to act before the fire broke out. We also speak to a former Interpol official who shares that his agency lacks the resources to tackle the problem.
The UK considers itself a leader on environmental concerns, but when it comes to dealing with waste, it has ways to deal with the mountains of waste and recycling generated by every home and business.
An additional concern besides the volume is that much of it is actually disposed of: large amounts of it are secretly dumped in rural areas in an illegal practice known as “fly-tipping”, where companies hired to remove the waste for recycling or disposal appropriate Don’t send it for handling, so avoid paying the fees required for those services. Company drivers take the garbage to a nearby farm field or an unattended lot and dump it, causing eye irritation, besides water pollution from oil cans and air pollution when these piles catch fire.
Even more alarming is that an estimated 20% of the county’s waste is handled illegally: one in five waste disposal companies operate as criminal enterprises.
Yet registering as one of the government-recommended garbage haulers is so easy that even a dog can do it — and at least one has (thanks to its owner’s help). Although these criminal practices would seem easy to stop, the government says it lacks the resources, and it’s not just a British problem: a former Interpol waste investigator admits to our podcast that they have minimal staff and funding to tackle the problem.
“If one in five cafes were run by criminals, wouldn’t we know about it?” One of the wonders of the investigators.
Listen here:
In this “True Eco-Crime” series for Mongabay’s podcast, investigative environmental journalists Lucy Taylor and Dan Ashby explore the UK’s illegal “waste roads” from their quiet English town to the nearby countryside and Poland.
This second episode is called “The Waste Jungle” and is part of the podcast series “Into the Wasteland” developed with the support of Journalismfund.eu.
In one episode, the pair meet an entrepreneur-turned-freelance waste crime investigator who survives a desperate flight across the country from a gang of fly-tippers and their dogs, when his late-night stakeout goes wrong. Listen here:
Subscribe to or follow Mongabay Newscast wherever you find podcasts, from Apple to Spotify. You can also listen to all episodes on the Mongabay website or download our free app for Apple and Android devices to get fingertip access to new shows and all our previous episodes.
Find out more about Taylor and Ashby’s work on their website and follow them on Twitter for updates @lucytaylor And @danielashby.
See and report examples of fly-tipping here on ClearWaste’s website.
Banner image: The UK’s recyclables, plastic packaging and waste are in rural areas across the country and in Turkey (pictured). Image courtesy of Kenner Ozcan via Greenpeace Media Library.
See related coverage on Mongabay here:
Playing Dangerously: The Environmental Impact of Video Gaming Consoles
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