Here’s my column on the huge but scarcely-known scandal of the UK’s illegal waste mafias. In hiding, burying and burning millions of tonnes of dangerous rubbish, they are poisoning our land, water and air. But the government looks the other way. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
PS: it's not just about fly-tipping. In fact that's just the visible, er, tip of the problem. We're talking about huge, organised, illegal dumps, all over the country.
What are advertised as independent "man with van" operations are often in reality members of major criminal syndicates, shifting industrial quantities of waste to secret dumps. The four governments of the UK, and their regulatory agencies, are turning a blind eye.
Each of the vans in a network, a recent report estimates, could allow the organisation to evade £132,000 of taxes. The return on investment for a company running 100 fake sole traders, it reckons, is somewhere between 40 to 1 and 80 to 1. This is mafia business, in the UK.
On the *very rare* occasion of someone being brought to court, a typical fine is a few hundred pounds. Yet they might have made millions from their crimes. No part of the regulatory system works. It's a total farce.
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