Criminals dumping waste in county
Saturday 10th October 2009, 10:08AM BST.
Organised criminal gangs from outside Shropshire are using the county as a rubbish tip – and lining their pockets with thousands of pounds in the process, it has been claimed.
Waste boss Donald McPhail said he believed a lot of unsightly flytipping was being carried out by crews from outside the county for a profit.
Mr McPhail, managing director of Veolia Environmental Services which manages waste for Shropshire Council, claimed gangs could make up to £500 a time by taking a truckload of waste and dumping it.
In the worst case 130 lorry and tractor tyres were dumped in Highley, near Bridgnorth, in March.
Mr McPhail said large amounts of tyres were dumped on average once a month in the county and large-scale drops were still going on.
He said: “If you had a truck or a skip full of stuff it would cost you £500 or £600 to dispose of it properly at a trade site, so you can get an idea about the kind of figures we are talking about here and you can see why criminals have been attracted to it.
“Even if you only did two drops a week it would be a very profitable exercise for the unscrupulous. We are not talking about someone making 20 quid here, we are talking about thousands.”
John Wallen, from Shropshire Council’s waste partnership, said he believed gangs were bringing the rubbish and tyres into Shropshire from more built-up areas in the Midlands.
West Mercia Police spokesman Richard Ewels added: “We would always urge anyone who witnesses people dumping rubbish, whatever and how much it may be, to either contact the council or the police.”
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Are we really to believe that criminals from the inner city are travelling to rural Shropshire to dump rubbish?
I thing you may find that this is a local problem which requires a local solution, its just that its easier to blame outsiders.
and wash your hands of it.
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Try so called travellers
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It makes no difference where the are from.
The law is the same all over England as far asI know.
What nonsence to talk of outsiders.
I am confused,sounds like it is ok for people to
dump rubbish in the county where they live.
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tyres can be burned for energy, they have as much energy in them as coal, so you will probably get paid for them by big users,, there is a la farge cement works near bridgnorth isnt there, come on people use your heads, this could be a boon for the county, millions of pounds of valuable fuel being given to the country free of charge by the city, thank you
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its all good as a fuel in cememt works, we can sell them to the cement industry, so we should be great ful for it
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Whatever the speculations are the facts remain that unscrupulous persons are illegally dumping waste in the rural areas of our country not just in Shropshire but up and down the country, this is being done for lucrative personal financial gain in isolated areas to evade capture and conviction for there actions. Public awareness and help in identifying and reporting those involved is required in all counties if this is to be stopped.
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and what else are businesses meant to do with them ??? the council is neglecting its duties not collecting or arranging any services for businesses to recycle or dispose of waste any more. I used to be contracted to the old district council, since they privatised it, the price has gone up 3 fold! in a recession! that is not right and you cannot get into the tip in a van any more
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hang them!
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ought to be able to tracve them from the serial numbers on the tyres , no ? probably cheaper just to deal with them that go through the courts to find the culprits i guess, especially as the chap above says they are being recycled or burned and not dumped so i doubt it really costs the council that much to deal with them really
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Hmmm… Interesting – VERY Interesting.
The article reads:
” Mr McPhail, managing director of Veolia Environmental Services which manages waste for Shropshire Council, claimed gangs could make up to £500 a time by taking a truckload of waste and dumping it.”
So .. If it’s that lucrative – why aren’t our “waste Bosses” looking at ways of making similar profits by “collecting waste”, instead of “forcing” “some” people to dump it becuase it’s so expensive to get rid of?
(cost said to be cc £500-600 for a skip/truck full)
Yhe way I see it:
We pay a lot of council tax and other taxes to cover the cost for things such as waste collection already – so if the cost of disposing was eliminated (becuase if it’s THAT lucrative as the article suggests – then WHY do we have to pay again?) then there’d be no reason to fly tip !
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i agree this goes on because of limited commercial waste collections, lousy recycling services and fortnightly bin collections
Waste bosses need to SORT IT OUT – get the collections better managed and you wont get a disposal problem
common sense really
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if its costing 500 quid a skip load, why not just set up a legit site where folk can dump stuff for half the price, make it cheaper for people and they will do the right thing
you cant hammer people for dumping if you dont give them a legitimate way to do it, too many councils in the UK now have abandoned small businesses in the middle of the recession and stopped providing waste services for them
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its a nuisance in the countryside but in the towns it happens too, i see black bags dumped around town all the time only difference is in the country side we dont get the same level of street sweeping services
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disgraceful
some one should do something about this
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Legitimate businesses already exist there called Landfills, transfer stations, recycling centres and incinerators.
High disposal cost are as a result of the following, when waste producers and that includes everyone of us, can’t always re-cycle or find outlets for some waste streams although every effort is made to maximise re-cycling so much so that the government year on year set high local authority re-cycling targets to drive and encourage re-cycling, the government in addition increase landfill tax’s to a level so high to discourage land filling.
Waste failing to meet the high expectation of re-cycling targets and outlets ends up in landfill and then fall into the high disposal Tax bracket and associated cost of £40 for every tonne produced as currently set by our government and that does not include the disposal cost itself.
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Perhaps if Veolia stopped charging such ridiculously high prices for these ” criminals ” to dispose of this rubbish then there would be no story here.
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the reason this is happening is because the council does not do enough to help small businesses with waste and recycling, you cant even take a van into the tip any more
give people a legitamate place to put stuff and they wont need to dump it
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i agree councils dont do enough to help small businesses with waste and recycling, espcially in the recession they should be laying on fairly priced commercial waste collections like they used to, this helps bring competition to the market so firms like veolia cannot charge what ever rates they like, also they should give businesses sites to bring waste to legally so they dont have to dump it
HEY???
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i agree with q its rediculas i have just done soem work on my house an i cant take it to the skip in the small van we have access to even though my previous people carrier could hold more and i could take that i have to pay for a skip to collect it which as ther eis plaster in there then the price doubles again no wonder people dump rubbish if its going to cost them just shy of £100 when they obviously have a van or simular to dump the rubbish in the first place
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Eric, I understand that it costs £2 for the disposal of a car tyre, so these criminals charge £1.50, then dump them. I understand that an ex-police officer was recently prosecuted for this very same con.
I have a friend of a friend who took a lorry tyre to the tip for a friend of a friend who had brought a house and removed the water feature that this tyre had been used for.
The tip said it was ‘commercial’ waste because a lorry is a ‘commercial’ vehicle. Are horse boxes not private? (mine is PLG 12.5 tonne down plated to 7.5 tonne). Whilst I am quite sure that my friend of a friend will have disposed of this tyre responsibly, I imagine that others would just dump it and let the council collect and take it to the tip.
In here lies the problem – the jobs-worths at the council!
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no wonder
since veolia took over from the old council, collection costs have risen 3 fold, they have no competition and businesses are stuggling,
what we need is for local councils to collect waste again to bring some competition into the waste business and bring the price down
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Don Hall said: “disgraceful, some one should do something about this”
Quite right Don, may I suggest you take some petrol and a box of matches to the next fly-tip you see.
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Simple organise the google cars to follow people tipping rubbish in the countryside. Or even better make use of CCTV camera’s at traffic to monitor lorries with rubbish.
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A lorry trailer was left in Hodnet earlier this year, that was laden with drums of all types of hazardous chemicals. Clearly criminal gangs are moving into waste disposal business.
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surely just grind them up into playground surfacing or recycle them as weights on sillage piles in farms or for padding on race tracks / crash barriers, no problems
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excuses for a poor waste collection service
in my opinion
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