22 July 2021
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3 min read
Flytipping and illegal dumping in on the rise in the UK
Environmental Services Association research suggest waste-related crime has surged over 50 per cent in three years, potentially costing taxpayers £1bn
Waste-related crime such as flytipping and illegal dumping is on the rise in England, potentially costing the UK taxpayer upwards of £1bn a year, as well as impacting public health and the environment, according to Environmental Services Association (ESA).
A report today by the waste and recycling trade body warns that waste-related crime in England has soared by 53 per cent over just the past three years, driving up costs to the economy from around £604m in 2015 to more than £924m in 2018/19.
Taking the available data for England and scaling it and applying it to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the report estimates the cost to the UK economy at "well above a billion pounds".
The independent research, which was carried out ib behalf of the ESA by research and consulting firm Eunomia, shows the most costly forms of waste crime in England are flytipping - which now exceeds £392m a year, up from £209m in 2015 - and the operation of illegal waste sites that cost the economy £236m a year, having risen from £98m six years ago.
Levies such as the Landfill Tax are placed on the disposal of waste in the UK in order to encourage waste reduction, reuse and recycling, and evading these taxes by not registering as a waste carrier and dumping waste at illegal sites therefore costs the public purse.
The costs of waste crime have risen in recent years due to a range of factors, including an increase in the number of recorded waste crime incidents taking place across the country, according to the report. These include flytipping, illegal dumping and uncontrolled burning of rubbish, as well as major export fraud and tax evasion.
Alongside the report, the ESA also published the results of a YouGov poll which it said suggested just over half of the 2,000 adults surveyed were unaware of their legal duty of care for the safe disposal of their waste, while around 70 per cent were not aware they could be personally prosecuted for failing to make required checks if their waste ended up being dumped by a third party.
EAS chair Gavin Graveson said waste criminals were "exploiting a lack of public awareness and lack of regulatory oversight in this area, which has led to an increase in fly-tipping and illegal waste sites that contribute significantly to the overall £924m cost of waste crime in England".
"Successive ESA reports over the past eight years have highlighted the shocking extent of waste crime in the UK and its cost to both the environment and economy," he added. "This latest report exposes the unfortunate truth that, despite additional regulatory focus in recent years, the scale of waste crime has significantly worsened. Although understandably delayed by the pandemic, it is now vital that the government proceeds at pace with long promised reforms of the regulatory regime and we must make it much harder for criminals to operate in the recycling and waste sector."
It comes alongside a separate report today which also highlights the growing costs of waste crime in the UK, estimating that almost a quarter of a million businesses in England could be handling waste illegally because the registration scheme for waste carriers "does not function effectively and is being misused".
Funded by non-profit circular economy organisation Material Focus, the report estimates nearly two-thirds (63 per cent) of businesses in England - just under 240,000 individuals or organisations - are offering to handle waste that appears to be unregistered when advertising their services.
In contrast, the tax evasion rates for comparative sectors where regulations require similar forms of formal registration - such as TV licences, car tax evasion, and gas safety -usually fall between the 1-8 per cent, the report notes.
Scott Butler, executive director of Material Focus said the research underscored "the scale and type of the unlicensed waste carrier activity and the ways this might be contributing to the extreme number of fly-tipping incidents in the UK".
"The fact that there are high numbers of unregistered carriers in practice is clearly a significant issue which means that waste electricals and other forms of waste aren't being properly recycled," he warned.
