Do You Know That Fly-Tipping is a Crime

Do You Know That Fly-Tipping is a Crime?

Fly-tipping is the deliberate illegal dumping of waste. It can be anything from a single bag of waste to a truckload of rubbish, and it blights our landscape, beauty spots, and residential areas alike.

Why do people just dump rubbish?

There are many reasons why people might dump rubbish. Councils tend to charge for the disposal of bulky items of rubbish, so people might try to save money by either dumping it themselves, or hiring often unscrupulous people to take it away for them. A lack of available disposal facilities, laziness, and a belief that rubbish is someone else’s problem all contribute to the fly-tipping problem too.

Why is fly-tipping such a problem?

It costs taxpayers and landowners around £86m-£186 million every year to investigate cases of fly-tipping and to clear up the rubbish.

Fly-tipping poses a risk to public health, blights our landscape, and harms wildlife.

Are people aware that fly-tipping is illegal?

Many people are probably guilty of fly-tipping in some shape or form, and they have no idea that what they are doing is against the law. When surveyed, 47% of people didn’t know that hiring an unlicensed 3^rd party to dispose of their rubbish was illegal, and 36% of people thought that dumping a sofa, or a mattress, for example, was acceptable.

What is classed as fly-tipping?

Here are some activities that would be classed as fly-tipping. Some of them might surprise you!

• Using an unlicensed person to remove rubbish for you. Anyone collecting waste needs to have a permit to do so.
• Putting an extra bag of rubbish next to your bin. Sometimes your rubbish might not fit in your bin but it doesn’t mean that it should be left in the street.
• Putting old appliances out in the street. People collecting this waste might not be registered traders, they might just take what’s valuable to them, and dump the rest.

The Crime Not to Care campaign

Crime Not To Care is a campaign that aims to raise the awareness of fly-tipping and how people might be contributing, even unknowingly, to the problem.

#CrimeNotToCare has been launched as a national, social media campaign by Keep Britain Tidy, who have also made information available for local authorities to give out to residents to ensure that the campaign’s message reaches as many people as possible.