The scene is like the aftermath of a tsunami: splintered timber, shattered glass, broken sofas, scattered clothes, plastic bags, smashed furniture, fridges and TV sets, all piled up as though tossed ashore by some mighty wave and strewn for over a mile along the water’s edge.
But this ugly photograph doesn’t show any far-flung tropical disaster zone and the cause of the mayhem certainly isn’t natural.
It was taken this week at Cory’s Wharf in Purfleet, Essex, on a stretch of council-owned land by the Thames and now ruined by the modern curse of fly-tipping.
Once, this would have been a pleasant enough spot to walk your dog, with views across the river and scrubland, dotted with bushes and ponds, to explore. Not any more. […]
You’d think that with a problem so widespread, so expensive and so upsetting to so many of us, more would be done to stop it. But that would be to reckon without the bureaucracy and institutionalised chaos that have done so much to make it possible.
Yes, of course some travellers are partly to blame. So, too, are the organised criminal gangs that now find fly-tipping almost as profitable as drug dealing. But the real problem is the system itself. On closer scrutiny, this epidemic of illegal waste-disposal is not happening despite our stringent environmental laws. It’s happening because of them.
I’m old enough to remember open dumps. They were common in the 60’s and were operated sometimes by towns and sometimes by private individuals. They tended to be community exchanges where things like old sofas were traded or simply dumped. They were also happy hunting grounds for boys with 22’s.
The dumps were put out of business by various US federal laws in the 70’s and 80’s. Most were converted to sanitary landfills. All this was to the good as many nuisances and unsafe practices were eliminated. However, dumping costs went up sharply. And so today, if you roam the American country side you will occasionally come across an illegal dump. The City of Columbus, OH, almost annually has cleanup campaigns for one or more of the river valleys in its jurisdiction.
I guess the point is that environmental issues are decidedly a middle class concern. The underclass, working class and Ruling Class doesn’t give a rat’s fart for it.
Over and over again …
You read a well-written article documenting mis-guided legislation, bureaucratic stupidity, and/or administrative corruption.
The author offers common sense solutions.
Everyone agrees, “this is ridiculous!”, time passes, and nothing changes.
I have a wild and crazy idea. Why not burn the garbage like they do in parts of Europe.
This details exactly what is happening in rural Newfoundland. Illegal dumping is rampant. My home province is without doubt the dirtiest province I have lived in in Canada.
I don’t know – I think the rubbish kind of enhances its surroundings – it certainly is what one would expect to find in such an industrial swamp.
On a more philosophical perspective the intent of reducing sold waste is an amiable one – however like all things socialists do their retardation makes them come at things with a bludgeon rather than a carrot. If you reduce waste by oppressing people with fines and regulatory tyranny you get what you see here – people always will find a way around bad/oppressive law – EU commies will never grasp this – they have the reflex of fascism.
Proper free market, unintrusive governing would create value for the waste and those who disposed of it the most profitable way benefit – solids should be incinerated and the resulting energy converted to usable energy – but I guess Britain’s Fabian proglodytes haven’t the capacity to seek solutions which do not rely on state force/intimidation.
Scoop the whole lot up, put in in containers and send it (collect) to the EU in Brussells. Maybe they can deal with it. This is lieu of the big fine the EU has placed on the U.K.
I read in October that the Halifax region in nova scotia forced everyone to put plant and food waste in green bins. the idiots forgot that there was leachate involved and now they have to come up with an additional 3 million dollars to do something about it. there is nothing efficient or effective about so called waste diversion or recycling. much like useless wind turbines there are costs and fossil fuels necessary to achieve the nothingness that they get. instead of one truck picking up garbage you have two, the fuel is burned by two trucks, not one. more manpower is needed and nothing is solved. I have seen pallets of segregated garbage going to landfills from recycle plants. use a new incinerator and generate electricity with the garbage. they can reduce pretty much everything to ash.
I remember 5 years ago, Calgary dump fee’s were $5. Then $12 the next and now $15.
Our county charged $20 for appliances while household garbage was free. Garbage went to the dump, appliances went into the bush. It took them a long time to figure it out. Strange thing was appliances are actually recycled. Meanwhile they will be pulling fridges out of the bush for 100 years.
Alberta has an electronics recycling program that ships all our old electronics back to Asia for supposed “recycling.” The environment would probably be way better off to just landfill them.
TIP OF THE DAY…take all your garbage to the indian reserve.Reserves make great dumping places.Done it for years,u have to pay at the scale house.
Fly-tipping, cool name for a resistance to fascism movement. Waste removal is a core government responsibility, especially at the civic level. I’ve had arguments on this very blog with fascists who support the government sloughing off their responsibilities in this area.
Recycling is unsustainable. If it were sustainable, they would be paying you to pick up your recyclables, not you paying them. As it stands, the recyclers get subsidies from government and you pay them too. Unsustainable. Just wait until the people who work for recycling companies become unionized, then the cost will be even more unsustainable than it is now..
I get so tired of 18th century solutions to garbage disposal. There is a much better way of dealing with the problem: http://www.plascoenergygroup.com/
Plasco is not the only plasma incinerator, but representative of what can be done if politicians and greenies would get their heads out of their butts. It gets rid of the garbage, produces power and recovers metals and glass. One company which does this even offered to pick up Calgary’s garbage for free if they were given the right to sell power into the grid. City council turned it down because they were afraid of “new technology”. BTW, this “new” technology has been around for 35 years.
Oh – almost forgot. Plasma incinerators can take garbage from existing landfills. So those eyesores can be emptied and turned to more productive uses.
One of the ironies is the dumpsites charging a premium for old tires and appliances….which they sell to recyclers.
The biggest scam is recycling glass in blue boxes. Consumers Glass in Mississauga is now history. It was the ONLY market for recycled glass when it was in business. Its need for recycled glass was provided within miles….the rest of the Province’s recycled glass went to landfill….now it all does.
Then there is that farce of Freon in appliances. Some “scientists” on government grants decided Freon caused holes in the ozone layer…..debunked now…..cold weather and low sunlight over the poles is the culprit and we know can conclude the springtime ozone holes have been there….forever.
So, too, are the organised criminal gangs that now find fly-tipping almost as profitable as drug dealing
If rubbish disposal has been made so expensive that illegal dumping is as profitable as illicit drugs, maybe the problem is how expensive you’ve made rubbish disposal.
Because all the costs are artificially imposed, as I understand it. It’s not really significantly more expensive to throw away trash now – it’s designed to “encourage recycling” or “reduce trash output”.
Incentives work.
Just not always the way you want them to.
North of Ooz, you should stop proving yer and idiot. I have a 2-1/2 yrs old F-150. In 2013 recyclables paid for the damn thing, 2014 paid for all running costs. Learn to be self sufficient like a conservative, gubmint is for lefties.
Ever since our municipality started charging for dumping household garbage at the landfill, old furniture, appliances, reno-refuse, and household waste has increasingly been dumped in the bush. Stupid bean-counters thought they could make more money at the dump, but it costs them more to clean up the garbage in the bush.
Recycling IS sustainable in our community. The money the recyclers get for aluminum, cardboard and HDPE containers pays for the other non-revenue materials they recycle. Some of the plastic waste is converted into diesel fuel. Recycling is cheaper than expanding landfills.
Snorkel around Bermuda and you find stereos mopeds, radios bikes…
Why pay?
canuck66,,,, that is exactly what I was trying to think of.
One man’s junk fly tip is – many years later – an archeologist’s prized dig.
Also bear magnets.