Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions - Keep Britain Tidy

Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions
because they have simply stopped working, making it hard and costly to get
them to disposal sites.
The Waste Electronic and Electrical Equipment (WEEE) directive (2002/96/EC)
similarly requires producers to recover, recycle, and treat old items from their
customers. It was expected to be brought into British law by 13 August 2005
for implementation by 1 st January, 2006. However this process has been
delayed and a new timetable for implementation was not yet released at the
time of writing. WEEE items include:
• Household appliances;
• IT and telecommunications equipment;
• audiovisual and lighting equipment;
• electrical and electronic tools;
• toys, leisure and sports equipment;
• medical devices; and
• automatic dispensers.
(EA: Online, accessed July, 2005)
The impact of this initiative on fly-tipping may not be as straightforward as for
vehicles. Unlike vehicles, for example, householders can currently take small
electrical and electronic goods to civic amenity sites for free. Indeed, much of
the fly-tipped household waste could be taken to civic amenity sites for free.
This implies that factors other than economics are driving the problem. These
could include ignorance of what to do with the waste, or simply convenience,
coupled with perception of low risk of capture.
Opportunity structures
The above discussion shows that while economic factors are clearly an
important driver for fly-tipping, there are other factors that combine to create a
situation where fly-tipping is more or less likely. This more complex notion of
the ‘causes’ of fly-tipping is known as the opportunity structure. The
opportunity structure describes the context which gives rise to the problem,
and the different factors that combine to facilitate the problem. Webb and
Marshall (2004) provide a good example of an opportunity structure in relation
to the fly-tipping of construction and demolition waste in London.
Example of a fly-tipping opportunity structure:
Fly tipping of construction & demolition waste: the offenders
perspective
• formal controls over waste movement are weak
• you get paid on the basis of how much waste you move and how
quickly, not where it ends up
• using landfill sites is expensive
• there are many ‘suitable’ places to tip
• it is easy to hide the identity of trucks and their owners
• the design of trucks makes tipping fast
• the risk of getting caught is small
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