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

Fly-tipping: Causes, Incentives and Solutions
experience of the researchers also was that such information was not easily
obtained, even from the local authority or civic amenity site workers.
Finally, the duty of care system seemed to have fallen into disrepute. These
businesses saw no incentive, for example, for buying a waste carrier licence.
Some felt that the system disadvantaged small businesses as the cost per
vehicle was much higher for them than their larger competitors. Some were
unaware of the recent duty of care legislation, and those that were couldn’t
see how it would make much difference to fly-tipping.
Overall, the picture painted here was of a system which actually at times
made it quite hard to behave honestly and legally. There seemed few
incentives to comply with the duty of care regulations, and those that did felt
disadvantaged competitively. This issue of a system that defaults to
dishonesty, i.e. where the costs of honesty outweigh the costs of dishonesty,
emerged throughout the study.
Householders
Black bin bags or household rubbish consistently emerge as the main fly-tip
problem, at least in terms of volume. It was, therefore, somewhat surprising
that just 1% of householders in the survey admitted to having fly-tipped in the
last twelve months. This can be partially explained by the fact that some local
authorities include side waste, or waste put out at the wrong time, as flytipping
whereas a householder might not.
Nevertheless, Flycapture data suggests that there are about one million
incidents of fly-tipping each year in England. The household survey found that
1% of households had fly-tipped in the last twelve months. On the basis that
this amounts to around 250,000 fly-tips nationally by householders each year,
this suggests that householders are responsible for around a quarter of all flytips
nationally.
Interestingly, the same survey reveals that around 3% of households had
been tempted to fly-tip but had not. Given the generally very positive views
about the availability and ease of using civic amenity sites, this suggests that
the current waste collection and disposal arrangements and enforcement
regime are preventing around at least 750,000 fly-tips per year, i.e. the
problem could be much worse. The question is what more to do.
As might be expected for this group, costs of legitimate disposal emerge as
less of driver for fly-tipping than being able to use a civic amenity site. People
fly-tipped because the site was closed or they didn’t have transport to get to it.
Loading up a car only to find that the site is closed when you get to it seems a
not unusual experience, leading to the waste being dumped at a convenient
location. Equally, many people living in areas of multiple deprivation do not
have access to a vehicle to get to a civic amenity site.
Areas of multiple deprivation suffer particularly from fly-tipping. As well as less
availability of transport to get to civic amenity sites, the higher density housing
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