“Why taxes are to blame for Britain’s fly-tipping problem” is the title of an article in today’s Telegraph by Patrick Galbraith, Environment Correspondent, and Emma Taggart, Economics Reporter, both of whom have earned their job titles. The standfirst is the title of this post. “Levy aimed at discouraging people from [X] is having the opposite effect” ought to win a National Recycling Award for ease of re-use. There’s a line that won’t be sent to landfill any time soon.
I quote:
The scale of the problem has become a national scandal, with observers focusing on how to stop fly-tippers, and questions being raised over the efficiency of regulators amid efforts to clean up the mess.
Yet there has been relatively little examination of the causes of the problem. One of the major drivers is that Britain has the highest rate of landfill tax in Europe.
Every time someone hires a skip or asks a builder to tear out a kitchen, the quote for the disposal of the rubbish comes with an added tax of £130.75 per tonne.
According to Mr Rayner, fly-tipping at the level we see it in rural England is “100pc an unintended consequence of the tax”.
The levy was first mooted by Ken Clarke, the former chancellor, in the autumn Budget of 1994 at just £7 per tonne.
At the time, Clarke said that the tax fulfilled “twin objectives of raising money and protecting the environment”. It was Britain’s first tax with an environmental purpose and was introduced with the promise that it would raise “several hundred million pounds a year”.
From 2007 to 2014, the tax rose by £8 a tonne each year in order to meet EU landfill diversion targets. Under Labour, the tax has risen significantly, climbing from £103.70 per tonne in 2024 to £130.75 in April 2026, a 26pc increase in just two years.
It is now far above equivalent taxes on the Continent. In France, the levy is €65 (£56) per tonne, while in Portugal it is €30. Even Denmark’s landfill tax is less expensive than ours.
At face value, the tax makes sense. It discourages people from mindlessly throwing things away and is meant to encourage recycling.
Unfortunately few people ever look past the mask of “face value”.
Sam Dumitriu, the head of policy at Britain Remade, a think-tank that campaigns for economic growth, notes that we currently have a system where taxes effectively incentivise people to fly-tip, but the authorities are scandalously useless at bringing those doing the tipping to justice.
“We have the worst of both worlds in that we have probably the biggest payoff in Europe for committing this crime, but we have pretty poor enforcement,” he says.
The results can be seen in the picture the Telegraph used to illustrate the article:
Up to 20,000 tonnes of waste was dumped beside the River Cherwell in 2025. Credit: Jacob King/PA Wire
Added later: it’s easy to get the scale of that photograph wrong and think the foliage at the sides is merely a pair of hedges between which someone has dumped a truckful of waste. Those are not bushes. They are full grown trees. A better impression of the amount of rubbish there is given by this drone footage published by the Guardian, which shows the rubbish heap and cars running up and down the A34 beside it, all in the same shot. Fly-tipping on this scale did not used to happen in the UK.
I beg to differ, the blame for illegal dumping lies with the dumpers.
This government of talentless no-marks now proposes to tackle knife crime by… imposing a registration regime for vendors of kitchen knives.
Yes, much as there are registered firearms dealers, there will be registered kitchen knife dealers. This will not be free. The costs will be passed on to the customer. None of it will stop a single knife being bought by anyone planning to use it for crime.
They cannot help themselves. Already this pointless excuse of a government has banned the sale and ownership of knives which look a bit scary, knives with saw edge blades, knives with holes in the blades, knives with etching on the blades, starting pistols with upward discharge of gas, and coming to a corner of the NuBrit dystopia soon… crossbows! Yes, 800 year old technology will soon be banned in Britain, much like free speech and free internet access.
Can the madness get much worse? Of course it can. This shower of shit have got three more years to eradicate all freedom in the name of… what exactly?
It’s The March of the Morons, but they’re in government.
@ JohnK “crossbows! Yes, 800 year old technology”
Try something along the lines of four times that figure (at least). The Crossbow by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey states that the crossbow was introduced into England by the Norman invaders but records show that the Chinese were usung crossbows from about the 7th century BC.
Payne-Gallwey’s book is worth having if you are interested in weapons technology and if you can’t puzzle out how to make a serviceable crossbow from that book and youtube channels, then you don’t deserve one.
The problem is not that access to weaponry is the problem. It is that there is no effective deterrent for using weaponry.So all the laws and bans in the world won’t stop the alleged problem.
This manages to be both true & fatuitous
A couple of thoughts:
1. One wonders what the reaction is going to be when people discover that this recycling malarkey is at best a complete waste of time.
2. “If we ever need it again we’ll know where to find it.” As someone once said in defence of landfills.
3. I seem to remember Brian Micklethwait recounting how he once shouted at the TV when the subject of recycling came up. “If it were worthwhile they would be paying me to do it.” Or some such.
Make that 3 thoughts.
Another perspective is to see waste management as a rationing procedure. Try disposing of waste legally through your local tip…
In our part of the world the tips are not open all the days of the week. Access is rationed. Certain waste is only disposable in certain tips, and at limited volumes. Access is rationed. Other types of waste are only allowed if a fee is paid. Access is rationed. Disposal of ‘business waste’ is chargeable. Access is rationed. On top of that household waste (which you are obliged to sort) may not be allowed for certain types. Access is rationed.
I don’t support fly tipping. But many people do not care for the rationing (either the costs or the inconvenience) and so turn elsewhere. But this shows how to reduce fly tipping – make waste disposal easier and cheaper. Duh.
My local waste tip in East Yorkshire is open 10:00 until 17:00 seven days per week. They fuss a bit about putting the correct waste in the correct skip but I’ve never had them refuse to take stuff. When I cleared my late mother’s house I was there just about every day for about three weeks and they never gave me any problems. I suspect that asbestos might cause an issue and I once surreptitiously dumped some ivory after I had refurbished the keyboard on an old harmonium.
I think that disposing of commercial waste may be an issue. There is still fly tipping in our area but maybe not as bad as areas where Discovered Joys hails from.
If people who take the trouble to take waste to the tip are charged a lot of money – they will, sadly, fly-tip.
Hard to see how this is an “unintended” consequence of the levy, as anyone of average intelligence would know that if you charge people money when they take stuff to the tip they are more likely to fly tip – to dump stuff by the side of the road, and so on.
Yes and the policy started with “Ken” Clarke (no doubt obeying the instructions of officials and “experts”) in 1994 – this was the John Major government, and Prime Minister John Major boasted that “we have spent more money than Labour promised to spend” – he thought that increasing government spending even faster than Labour had promised to do in the 1992 General Election was a GOOD thing.
At my local “Recycling Centre”, you have to book a slot and households are restricted to 4 visits per 28 days.
More info here Torbay tip
And here’s a link to the rules/charges regarding commercial waste disposal Torbay commercial tip
Fly-tipping isn’t just out in the countryside: a pile gradually accumulated at the rear of a closed commercial property behind me. It’s likely that those responsible for the 2 fridge-freezers, tv, armchair, mini-fridge, were residents of the neighbouring buildings. The council operates a bulk uplift service, details here but some people are just lazy and prepared to shit on their own doorsteps.
Eventually the council lifted the whole lot, as it started to spill onto the road, but not long after, items started to accumulate again.
I despair.
Does anyone remember the first scandal of the 21st century?
Early in January 2000, abandoned cars all of a sudden, started appearing in the streets of London.
Why?
Because the EU had brought in recycling tax to safely dispose of the materials in a car which had come to the end of its use.
Until the end of 1999, person with an old car which was at the end of its life could drive it to a breaker’s yard and get £50 scrap value. From January 2000, the tax meant the owner having to pay the yard. It was therefore easier and cheaper just to abandon the car by the side of the road, which was what a lot of people did.
Governments, and particularly the EU, simply does not understand human nature, particularly when it comes to people on the margins. This is a result of inbuilt authoritarianism – “you WILL pay the tax”. They are incapable of accepting that some people will simply say “shan’t”
It only takes a few minutes thought to realise that a far better solution was to put the levy on the original purchase price. If you are spending tens of thousands on a new car plus VAT you are not going to notice and extra £100 fee. Furthermore, you are not going to get you car until you have paid it so there really is no choice.
How would a levy discourage illegal waste dumping? It seems to me that levies can only discourage legal behavior.
The whole article’s behind a subscription wall or something. The bit Natalie quoted explains how a levy could discourage generating waste in the first place (not plausibly, but it could happen) but not how it could discourage illegal dumping of any generated waste.
Maybe British-English uses ‘levy’ to describe fines as well as taxes? I think we only use it for taxes here in the USA. Though the quoted bit only talks about taxes anyway.
Here in Cheshire East, the council has been busy closing waste disposal depots ( or recycling centres as I think they are now called) and if you want to use one of those left, you have to make an appointment.
We are being governed by idiots in both local and national government, including the civil service.
john in cheshire,
I also live in Cheshire East and waste disposl is a nightmare.
Cheshire of course also boasts Britain’s largest fly-tip. It is outside of Nantwich and is currently about 280,000 tonnes of shite. The Dibble have stated they have no idea how it got there. That’s nearly three Nimitz class carriers and the Police admit to being clueless.
CayleyGraph2015,
Rhat’s the problem with criminals- they break the law! The scoundrels!
“the blame for illegal dumping lies with the dumpers.”
And the blame for incentivising it lies with the voters.
You’re not jailing enough people for a long enough time. I’m willing to bet that, when someone is caught dumping, he gets a small fine and sometimes might even pay it.
Not punishing someone strongly enough to stop the behavior doesn’t transfer the blame to society. The dumper is still the sh**head. So punish them harder and harder until the behavior stops.
You might be on to something, there.
On further reflection, I think I have heard ‘levy’ in the USA as the verb used when applying a fine — ‘to levy a fine’. I don’t recall hearing it used as a noun synonymous with fine — ‘you’ll be hit with a levy for not buying enough health insurance’.
As others have said, one now has to book a slot to go to the tip. Not because there are so many customers that there is congestion. (There isn’t.) The council just wants you to queue. And show photo-ID.
A couple of weeks ago, I had dug out the old rubble that the previous occupant of my house had buried in a corner of the garden. NB So the problem is at least 40 years old at this point. Becuse I am relatively decrepit and I didn’t want to wreck the car, I put it into a few of the smaller bags that smokeless fuel comes in, the easier to lift it in and out of the boot. When I got there, the tip lad – now a jobsworth with a walkie-talkie and a clipboard – told me I had too many bags and that anything over five would be chargeable. He then radioed ahead to the man by the rubble skip to pre-grass me up. I said that I would take the extra away with me, stop outside the tip, book a new slot, turnround and then dump the extra. Naturally, only one visit per house per day.
In the event, of course, the lad by the skip watched me empty five bags in. I looked at him. We both grinned and he turned away to do something else while we both triumphed over The Man.
It was and is a madhouse of make believe necessity.
While we were living in London 2000-2007, we watched as council rules for recycling and refuse became more and more convoluted and the fees proliferated.
So it was not much surprise to us that a good many people found simpler, less expensive alternatives.
As a resident of Westminster (taking in my neighbourhood of Pimlico), I can use the Smuggler’s Wharf disposal facilities in Wandsworth. It’s “free” but the place is funded via taxation.
Over and over, we see examples of Laffer Curves where raising the cost of X encourages suboptimal outcomes.
Maybe if taxes were lower overall then charging so much for recycling would not be such a problem.
There’s also a cultural thing, I think. Look at the amount of rubbish people leave around: on pavements, woods, public parks – you name it. I think much of this is down to the values, or lack of said, that parts of the public have. For a variety of reasons, much of the public is a total shower.
I’m in Singapore 🇸🇬 this week. I get the impression that louts are fed to salt water crocodiles. If so, I approve.
Note: the photo illustrating the article is not really of ‘fly tipping’. As comments on the video note, that river of wasted has been part processed, it is an illegal dump (and someone must have noticed before it got that big) but not a case of someone dumbing a van load in a field by the side of the road.
David Davies – I am ashamed to say that I had forgotten about the cars. Thank you for reminding me.
Yes – we are either ruled (the officials and “experts”) by idiots – or by people with bad (very bad) intentions.
They cane them actually. Try Googling Micheal Fay.
@Jonathan Pearce
The first time I visited Singapore, I was taken for a drive by a colleague, who parked in a municipal multi-storey. He clipped a paper ticket to display (I assume it is all electronic these days) and was careful to let the little circles of paper fall in his car. “People have been fined just for littering these little bits of paper,” he said. The “broken windows” principle in action….
I always laugh when Brits tell me that Singapore is boring and sterile, or complain how freedom is restricted there. Britain is far more prone to banging people up for saying the wrong thing. Singaporeans also have the freedom to spend the bulk of their gross income as they please and the freedom to walk anywhere in the city unmolested at any time.
Waste disposal has become a carnival of dunces throughout the West because environmentalists don’t understand, or refuse to accept, that technology has largely solved the problem. Moreover, new methods largely pay for themselves — when their use is permitted. Modern landfills can (and should) be enormous, because when full, there’s no longer any danger of leakage, heavy-metals runoff, groundwater taint, soil poisoning etc; you use innovative techniques to seal it up, then reclaim the land. In smarter US jurisdictions, inert landfill sites are now used for housing, golf courses, even agriculture. Incinerator tech is similarly advanced, producing virtually no pollution but a great deal of much-needed energy and useful by-products. In most of Europe and N America, however, it is politically impossible to launch a new landfill or incinerator operation. Part of this is paranoid Green NIMBYism, but mostly there are now large constituencies who benefit from our expensive, haphazard, complicated, ineffective waste systems, and block real progress on the matter. It’s not a stretch, therefore, to say that it’s environmentalists who are despoiling the environment. Oh, and btw, “blue box” recycling is a laughably transparent scam, easily avoided with the use of opaque “bin liners;” the day I get elbows-deep in my own trash at government’s behest will be a cold day in a very dirty hell.