Fly Tipping

[RobinBHM]

Just up the road, a busy roundabout going over the M23 always has loads of litter, which is clearly chucked out of cars stopped at the traffic lights? Why? Is it that hard to take it home?

I see the same type of litter in car parks up on Ashdown Forest.

The local council have started putting up notices saying how many millions is spent each year clearing litter -they shouldnt need to spend anything.....

 

[John Brown]

I only tip flies if they've given exceptionally good service.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Just up the road, a busy roundabout going over the M23 always has loads of litter, which is clearly chucked out of cars stopped at the traffic lights? Why? Is it that hard to take it home?

I see the same type of litter in car parks up on Ashdown Forest.

The local council have started putting up notices saying how many millions is spent each year clearing litter -they shouldn't need to spend anything.....

I had a conversation with a local county councillor about littering, he maintained there was nothing we could do about it. I said I would love to see you go to Singapore and drop litter, just to see how long you still had your freedom. He grudgingly admitted I had a point.

We lived a couple of hundred yards from a chip shop on a beautiful avenue and in the summer people used to drive down the road a bit, park up and eat their f&cs. One day as we approached a car just as the driver threw all their wrappings out. I looked at swmbo. Swmbo looked at me. Don't ... she said, just don't. Don't what, sweetheart? Don't ... oh shhitt ... I picked it all up and threw it through his open window. Not a word. I often wonder if he remembers that day when he does it again ... probably not, but it made me feel better.

 

[Lons]

Having just moved from Herefordshire to Northumberland it's been an interesting 'compare and contrast'.

Request to take black bin bags down to the roadside given the very long track between house and roadside

Herefordshire - no problem

Northumberland - NO

Recycling remit

Herefordshire - pretty much anything and all goes into a clear recycling bag and taken down to the roadside

Northumberland - very, very limited recycling

Taking household DIY waste to the tip

Herefordshire - no problem. Even asbestos and plasterboard

Northumberland - £25 for a car load. No asbestos. No plasterboard. No this. No that.

Council political allegiance

Herefordshire - Conservative majority

Northumberland - Labour

Says it all, really.

I should have warned you about that before you moved Roger, my apologies.

Northumberland county council is dire. I live close to Morpeth which currently accommodates the CC headquarters, a relatively new, spacious and imposing building on the edge of town. They are attempting, and will probably succeed in moving to a new £32m building on the east coast - why? Because it's smack in the middle of labour heartland where if you put a monkey in as candidate it would be voted in. ( Come to think of it they've done that with 2 already, both crooks and locally known as the Northumberland mafia. :roll: )

The council have for years steadfastly prevented any edge of town shopping development but are proposing huge housing development, school and shops, including a MacDonalds next to the school ffs on the site of the existing building, in other words edge of town development.

Council tax is being increased by the maximum 4.99%, it always is, while drastically cutting services and charging for everything possible. The same council who was one of the biggest losers in the Iceland banks scandal where they lost millions of our money. I have no illusions where my £2500 pa council tax is spent.

A number of years ago I was asked to build a brick wall outside the building and fit a sandstone nameplate into it. It was a costly job and they had the bricks purpose made and shipped from Birmingham but they forgot the coping bricks and sent a van to collect them, cost them a fortune and at the same time had hundreds of metres of block paving replaced and spent thousands painting everything in sight - reason - a 30 minute visit by the Queen.

Bob

 

[Lons]

Just up the road, a busy roundabout going over the M23 always has loads of litter, which is clearly chucked out of cars stopped at the traffic lights? Why? Is it that hard to take it home?

I see the same type of litter in car parks up on Ashdown Forest.

The local council have started putting up notices saying how many millions is spent each year clearing litter -they shouldn't need to spend anything.....

I had a conversation with a local county councillor about littering, he maintained there was nothing we could do about it. I said I would love to see you go to Singapore and drop litter, just to see how long you still had your freedom. He grudgingly admitted I had a point.

We lived a couple of hundred yards from a chip shop on a beautiful avenue and in the summer people used to drive down the road a bit, park up and eat their f&cs. One day as we approached a car just as the driver threw all their wrappings out. I looked at swmbo. Swmbo looked at me. Don't ... she said, just don't. Don't what, sweetheart? Don't ... oh shhitt ... I picked it all up and threw it through his open window. Not a word. I often wonder if he remembers that day when he does it again ... probably not, but it made me feel better.

Co-incidently Phil I've been out this afternoon picking up litter thrown out of cars on to the grass verge leading to our village, really pi**es me off especially as there are always beer cans and bottles among it. I can guarantee there will be more there tomorrow.

 

[sawdust1]

Did our local council not think that if they start charging at the local tip for nearly everything ( their is an A4 list of items and the charges ) and bin
collections at 2 weekly intervals, with 3 weeks in the pipeline then their would be an increase in fly tipping. The department in charge of this are a
joke !

Had some flat pack stuff left at the bottom of our lane, told my councillor friend and with in 1 hour of contacting him it was picked up, so a star for that.

A friend took a sofa to our local tip in his van and was told to take it aware pay £10, made a call to his dad to meet him outside the gate, loaded it into his estate car and they took it back in with no problems and no fee !

Once again the bloke working hard to earn a crust is being ripped off !

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I was queried on something I had in my car whether it was commercial - it wasn't - and when I unloaded I was next to a large white van bearing the monicker of a local carpet fitter. That alone should have disqualified him, let alone the 150+ cardboard carpet centre tubes he dumped. I wonder how that worked, then ...

 

[llangatwgnedd]

Carpet fitter probably has a permit.

If your local recycling point wont take plasterboard, how do you dispose of it?

 

[Phil Pascoe]

No. There absolutely no commercials allowed in. None. He paid someone off, my neighbour used to. His dumping went from £40 a load to £190 when whomever was getting the backhander was found out.
If your local recycling point wont take plasterboard, how do you dispose of it? In a hedge. How else do you think?

 

[TFrench]

Ours have got ridiculous lately and fly tipping has gone through the roof. They charge £5 a bucket to bin hardcore! We had a good bin system - one for garden waste, one for recyclables and one for non-recyclable waste. Worked perfectly. So last year they decided you had to pay £40 for them to collect the garden waste bin. Now everyone dumps it in the black bin and it goes to landfill. Its insane!

 

[Terry - Somerset]

The more councils charge for domestic waste disposal, the more will be fly-tipped.

This is clearly counter productive - the only real question is the point at which the costs of clearing up the mess left exceed the revenue raised.

 

[Beau]

Guess the only answer is to have disposal tax on all new goods to subsadise free disposal.

 

[Lons]

Guess the only answer is to have disposal tax on all new goods to subsadise free disposal.

Agreed but never going to work because as soon as settled in and accepted they'll start charging anyway. Isn't it always so!

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Guess the only answer is to have disposal tax on all new goods to subsadise free disposal.

Don't agree.

We already have lots of taxes, both national and local, some of which are used to fund the public good of waste disposal. Thus, the designated public body should dispose of any waste members of the general public may from time to time generate in their private domestic activities. Also, businesses pay rates, part of which is to fund the disposal of general waste. (Not quite so straightforward when you get to hazardous industrial waste, but legal provisions are made for that, and there's a whole industry set up to serve the need.)

The more you load waste disposal costs onto ordinary members of the public (who have already paid for the service through Council Tax), or businesses (who have already paid for it through rates), the more they will look to minimise the costs in any way they can - including in extremis, fly-tipping. No additional cost, no need to find cheaper ways, much less likelihood of fly-tipping. Councils should be legally obliged to take and safely dispose of any waste generated by any member of the public in the normal course of their daily lives. If the councils choose to recoup some costs by recycling what they economically can, or turning it into something useful like heat or power, then great - that reduces Council Tax bills.

 

[transatlantic]

Honestly, government spending is like a game of kerplunk.

 

[Paul200]

In contrast to the tales on here our local tip will take anything, no charges and they help unload. I drive an L200 pickup and when we first moved here 2 and a bit years ago I was back and forth to the tip a lot (the house was also a tip!). My truck attracted a bit of 'are you trade' attention at first (I'm not) but once they got used to me everything was fine. I've also seen a few obviously trade vans offloading there without even a raised eyebrow. I couldn't praise them high enough really.

Yet, believe it or not, we are the only local authority area in the UK that doesn't yet have domestic waste recycling in place. Mind you - once it is up and running I wonder how relaxed the guys at the tip will be?

 

[Beau]

Guess the only answer is to have disposal tax on all new goods to subsadise free disposal.

Don't agree.

We already have lots of taxes, both national and local, some of which are used to fund the public good of waste disposal. Thus, the designated public body should dispose of any waste members of the general public may from time to time generate in their private domestic activities. Also, businesses pay rates, part of which is to fund the disposal of general waste. (Not quite so straightforward when you get to hazardous industrial waste, but legal provisions are made for that, and there's a whole industry set up to serve the need.)

The more you load waste disposal costs onto ordinary members of the public (who have already paid for the service through Council Tax), or businesses (who have already paid for it through rates), the more they will look to minimise the costs in any way they can - including in extremis, fly-tipping. No additional cost, no need to find cheaper ways, much less likelihood of fly-tipping. Councils should be legally obliged to take and safely dispose of any waste generated by any member of the public in the normal course of their daily lives. If the councils choose to recoup some costs by recycling what they economically can, or turning it into something useful like heat or power, then great - that reduces Council Tax bills.

We do have lots of taxes but there is not endless money in Government coffers. Sure they waste loads but we cant do much about that as it's always going to be that way IMO. At the end of the day extra money will have to come from somewhere.

Seems fairer that the consumers pay and those that try to reuse and make do don't. Why the hell should I subsidise someone else who likes to refurnish their house every few years? Cant comment on business waste as have limited experience of that.

 

[Rhyolith]

Seems fairer that the consumers pay and those that try to reuse and make do don't. Why the hell should I subsidise someone else who likes to refurnish their house every few years? Cant comment on business waste as have limited experience of that.

I agree. Waste is a huge drain on so many resources (land, clean water, finance, etc...) any long term solution must aim to reduce it. To me it therefore makes sense to get the people producing the waste to pay for its handling (preferably reuse or recycling), as it will probably encourage them to produce less.

The one certainity here is less waste is good for everyone... yet we still package everything and makes things to be thrown away :?

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Any human activity will generate some waste. Even hunter-gatherers left piles of cockle shells, animal bones and the like. Now we've developed a bit technologically, we've got far more ways of generating waste. Humans, being human, don't all behave the same - some tightwads like me generate comparatively little, some fill their wheelie-bin to overflowing every week.

We've decided, down the years, that councils will collect and dispose of domestic waste; we could have just left it to individual households to make their own arrangements, as in medieval times. Anything taken on as a public service will inevitably be used a lot by some, and hardly at all by others - think libraries, for example - if I want a book, I buy it, but that doesn't mean I won't fund a library service. I don't need social care, so why should I be made to fund that? Answer - because one day I might need it.

Just because a service is provided at public expense, doesn't mean everybody will use it equally. It could be argued that it's better to fund the council to take the neighbour's house refurbishment waste rather than allow it to pile up in the street. Or be fly-tipped somewhere.

 

[Rhyolith]

Any human activity will generate some waste. Even hunter-gatherers left piles of cockle shells, animal bones and the like. Now we've developed a bit technologically, we've got far more ways of generating waste...

You might as well extend that to all animals (dying, leaving half eaten kills, pooping, etc). The difference is thats not really waste (depends on your definition obviously), as shells, bones and flesh integrate back into the ecosystem without issue fairly quickly. Our modern production of plastic, metal, toxins, blah blah blah does do not, making it an entirely different ball game. I reject that humans will always produce waste (defined as things that won't re-intergrate quickly) as its easily avoidable on a practical level... a on a societal level its a different matter.

To me the best solution is to stop producing waste in the first place. It will save a lot of money, remove silly issues like fly tipping (I totally agree with the OP that fly tipping is despicable!) and saves wastage of resources such as oil, metals, etc.