#fly-tipping

#fly-tipping

Dumped fridges, a felled tree left to rot, and household waste floating in the breeze perhaps not what a tourist would expect to see when they arrive in London, after leaving its most famous airport. But that's exactly what greets people as they drive past Heathrow's northern perimeter on their way towards Central London. Last week I headed out to Harlington near Hayes to interview residents, after hearing things were getting out of hand with fly-tipping in their cul-de-sac.

The council defended the posts, saying they had been viewed by thousands and that nobody else had complained. The posts came after the south-east London authority announced it would be investing 5m to tackle fly-tipping, including the installation of new CCTV cameras, a public reward scheme and tougher sanctions. The council's X and Facebook pages both had a picture of a refuse worker throwing a bag of rubbish into a compactor, with the statement: "We're not putting up with this s*** anymore."

Sophisticated criminal networks are dumping millions of tonnes of waste in the British countryside every year, costing the UK an estimated £1 billion annually, according to a House of Lords inquiry. The Environment and Climate Change Committee found that large-scale fly-tipping operations are increasingly linked to organised crime groups involved in money laundering, drug trafficking and modern slavery. The inquiry estimated that around 38 million tonnes of waste are illegally dumped each year.

London saw more than 440,000 fly-tipping incidents in the year 2023/24, with 50 incidents per every 1,000 residents more than double the English average. Data reveals that eight out of the ten worst locations in the country for fly-tipping are in the capital. It comes after more than a dozen London authorities increased fly-tipping penalties to 1,000 and hired more enforcement officers in an effort to combat the city's spiralling waste problem.

Brent Council says it 'won't accept' fly-tipping, with a man fined £4,600 for dumping an old bed, reflecting their zero-tolerance approach.

Facing Heaven, a vegan Chinese restaurant in Hackney, was fined nearly 20,000 after repeatedly fly-tipping waste, ignoring warnings from the local council.

We're proud to be a part of this significant operation, helping to tackle one of the city's most challenging fly-tipping sites. Our team worked closely with Goody Demolition and local authorities to ensure that waste was safely collected and transported to our recycling facilities, minimising the environmental impact.