Illegal Waste Dumping Is Becoming More Sophisticated. Can It Be Stopped?
9 min read
Illegal waste dumping is a growing criminal enterprise in the UK. Sophie Church explores what government can do to combat it
Walking around the fields behind his house one day five years ago, Peter saw some yellow machinery lying on the ground and heard the buzz of chainsaws. The farmer must be doing some work on the land, he assumed, and walked on.
Only later – when he heard that tonnes and tonnes of rubbish had been illegally dumped in the nearby woods – did he realise what these tools had been for.
“Whoever went in there went in with diggers and chainsaws, and were the ones that felled that area that the waste had been dumped in,” Peter, whose real name has been protected, tells The House today. “I only saw after the fact that it was something illicit.”
Peter lives near Hoad’s Wood, an ancient bluebell woodland and site of special scientific interest (SSSI) in Kent. A spot once famed for its beauty, it is now better known for the 12 feet of rubbish criminals have dumped on its soil.
It took a long time for the authorities, once notified, to act on the Hoad’s Wood dump. “Both the police and the council pointed fingers at each other,” says Peter. The clean-up, led by the Environment Agency (EA), finally began this summer.
Hoad’s Wood is the tip of the rubbish iceberg in an expanding criminal enterprise dubbed the ‘New Narcotics’. “There’s the one on Eastchurch Gap on the Isle of Sheppey – another SSSI where they drove and dumped [rubbish] over the side of cliffs onto the beach. There’s also Strawberry Hill, the Borstal site, and the Hoad’s Wood site,” Peter rattles off in quick succession. “That’s four sites in Kent alone.”
Most recently, in June, Oxfordshire locals reported a mass of waste – shredded plastics, polystyrene, tyres and other household items – dumped between the River Cherwell and the A34 near Kidlington. The pile, at risk of contaminating the waterway, currently sits at 150m long and 6m high. The Guardian has reported that the UK is now home to at least 8,000 illegal waste sites like Kidlington’s.
For criminals, the ruse is simple: offer to collect waste from a business or local council at a low rate, and, instead of taking it to the landfill and paying a landfill tax, dump it somewhere and trouser the profit.
In more sophisticated operations, gangs collect waste, take it back to a warehouse they have rented under a fake company name, and shred it. They will then leave the waste in the warehouse and walk away. Under current laws, whoever owns the building will be responsible for the mess.
Peter also suspects that other perpetrators actually purchase land to use as an illegal waste dump.
“They go on to the Land Registry. They find out: ‘Here’s a perfect site, just off the main road, you can drive off, go to the roundabout and turn in. What we’ll do is establish a legitimate business to give it a front, call it a storage business. We’ll buy the land and start preparing the ground',” he says.
“Everyone there will be like, ‘Oh, there’s a storage business setting up. It means it’s quite natural that they’re going to be preparing the ground ready for the storage units’. So, people ignore it.”
Gangs can also mulch down non-recyclable material and disguise it as dirt. They will then take it to landfills, which offer a reduced fee to use the material for engineering around the site.
“Obviously there’s a huge incentive in that differential between the high and low rate of landfill tax to try and disguise active waste as inert,” says Ben Johnson, speaking on behalf of the Environmental Services Association.
“For example, gypsum plasterboard can release toxic compounds if landfilled with other waste, so it should either be sent to specialist recycling or be landfilled in a segregated landfill cell away from other waste. This comes at a higher cost, so criminals will often crush it and try to pass it off as inert construction aggregates or mix it in with other general waste to avoid those costs and pocket the change.”
If you have zero landfill tax, there would actually be very little incentive for criminals to be dumping
These waste crimes are proving costly to clean up. The EA is now spending around £15m to clean the Hoad’s Wood site – money that had been set aside for flood protection programmes.
But Calum Miller, the Liberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock, the constituency home to the Kidlington dump, has no sympathy for the EA. Made aware of concerns in June, and first visiting the site of the dump in July, the EA only prevented access to the site in mid-October, he says.
“In this case, when I challenge them, the Environment Agency tell me they were very focused on the investigative side,” he tells The House. “I don’t believe they did nearly enough on the protective side to ensure that this waste couldn’t fall into the River Cherwell.”
Miller adds that there needs to be “much more joining up” between the EA and Land Registry to detect when vulnerable sites change ownership.
With waste crime becoming more prevalent, experts say the regulatory regime needs to be far stricter – and actually enforced.
“Online registration to become a waste carrier is a quick and easy process,” says Johnson. “A criminal doesn’t need to prove competency or legitimacy – they simply have to fill out a few details, pay a small fee, and they get their carriers license.”
When waste criminals are discovered, the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, it is argued. “Where a prosecution has been successfully sought, and a criminal has been prosecuted for waste crime, penalties are so low that it’s not a deterrent. They just take their slap on the wrist. They see it as a cost of doing business.
“There’s definite action that could be taken around the Crime and Policing Bill that could strengthen those penalties and ensure that waste crime is seen for the scale of crime it is,” says Miller.
The government is putting measures in place to combat waste crime, however. In its Environment Improvement Plan, published earlier this month, it pledged to “stop criminals using permit exemptions to hide illegal waste activity”, introduce “stronger penalties to ensure that only the right people can transport and manage waste” and “introduce a digital waste tracking service to modernise existing waste record keeping”.
But with waste crime costing the UK economy £1bn a year, yet a landfill tax only raising £489m last year, abolishing the tax would leave criminals with no reason to commit the crime, campaigners argue.
“If you have zero landfill tax, there would actually be very little incentive for criminals to be dumping,” says Peter. “In my mind, unless you can come up with a better solution, you should just turn it to zero overnight – because it doesn’t collect that much, and actually it’s creating a far more expensive clear up.”
However, Labour has committed to keeping the landfill tax in the Budget, with rates set to increase from April next year. Parliamentarians have now told The House that the proceeds, which currently flow to the Treasury, should be temporarily allocated to the EA to help it clear existing rubbish dumps.
Liberal Democrat peer Earl Russell, a member of the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee, says the current setup “borders on the ludicrous” as it’s “one arm of government robbing another”.
“It just makes it difficult to have any form of joined-up government that is capable of dealing with a serious organised waste crime and clearing up the mess that’s left behind. So, clearly I would call on the government and the Treasury in particular to look again at that issue.”
Labour MP for South West Norfolk Terry Jermy has a farm in his constituency which has been dumped with 200 bales of DIY waste masquerading as hay – which will likely cost £250,000 to dispose of. It “may end up finishing the farm off”, he says.
He says he “strongly supports calls for the Treasury to allow landfill tax receipts to be redirected towards Defra and the Environment Agency to help with clean-up costs”.
There is no indication the Treasury will pursue such a measure, however. While the government prevaricates, the UK is becoming more of a target for waste criminals from abroad.
Giving evidence to the Lords’ Environment and Climate Change Committee, Dr Anna Willetts, co-convenor of the UK Environmental Law Association Waste Working Party, said waste crime is “not just homegrown in London”.
Criminals overseas are using apps and the dark web to coordinate waste dumping. The crime, “is not just ringing up a colleague or a ne’er-do-well down the road,” Willetts said. “It is well organised and sophisticated.”
While the government is trying to combat waste crime, criminals are pursuing ever-more sophisticated means of dumping rubbish. Now, locals are running out of patience with the authorities.
“Literally for the last three, four, five years, we’ve had organised crime gangs just roving around the area with impunity,” says Peter. “No one is really doing anything about it.”
An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “Illegal waste dumping is appalling, and we work tirelessly to protect the environment and communities from it. Investigations can be multi-layered and complex as we look to bring rogue operators, often from the criminal underworld, to justice.
“Last year alone, our dedicated teams successfully stopped activity at 743 illegal waste sites, and we’re doubling staff in our Joint Waste Crime Unit to help crack down on these miserable crimes.”
A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson said: “This government is working in lockstep with the Environment Agency to clamp down on these appalling waste crimes which blight our communities and natural spaces.”
