On 26th February 2025, BBC Radio 5 Live’s Breakfast Show talked about the role of organised crime in illegal waste dumping in unlicensed landfill sites.
Journalist Yvette Austin focussed on Kent, but the waste scandal includes the whole of the UK, with potentially 18% of refuse in England handled illegally.
As this video report shows, ‘this isn’t throwing the odd bit out of the back of a car or a transit van or something’.
What it is, by contrast, is the criminal creation of sites where ‘a huge runway of waste is spread across the land’, and ‘burying it doesn’t make it OK’.
We pick up fly-tipped waste at intervals from the areas we operate in which, like the examples in the report, are in the south east of England. But it is depressing to see that there is so much more at work here than small operators and opportunists.
Even so, it was good to see Dan Cooke from the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management talking about the very many honest operators in the waste management industry.
Freddie Jacobs (above), Founder and Director of Only Pay What It Weighs, said, “The great waste scandal will only worsen if people turn a blind eye to criminality. As the reporting says, unmarked waste dumps are being filled up by unmarked lorries, sometimes driven without number plates. These need to be reported and called out so that enforcement action can be taken. If it is not, then our country will be a worse place to live in. As our business grows, we intend to be influential in helping to reduce the sometimes disgusting practices in an industry that should be clean.”
In the meantime, whether your waste disposal needs are large or small, be careful who you choose, and by all means, contact us.