Press

A web site where people report fly-tipping, Clearwaste, said it had seen a 75 % surge in reports of dumping beside roads and in green areas throughout lockdown. Its manager Martin Montague told the BBC that he had heard, in some instances, of people buying second hand fridges during the pandemic shopping rush, filling them with waste, and dumping them.

The illegal activity doubled in London during coronavirus lockdown when tips and recycling centres shut their doors. Martin Montague, creator of the free ClearWaste.com fly-tipping reporting website and app, said there was a 76 per cent increase in reports of fly-tipping across the country.

There were over a million incidents of fly tipping last year in England alone. It’s an unsightly, and expensive, problem – costing nearly £60m of taxpayers’ money to clean up in 2019. 2020 looks like being the worst year for the problem yet.

A businessman who is behind an app for reporting illegally dumped waste will take on fly-tippers in an episode of a new television show to air this weekend. Martin Montague, who lives in the Meon Valley, will appear in several episodes of the new television series Filthy Britain SOS on Channel 5.

A date has not yet been set for tips reopening after the council closed all five at the start of the coronavirus lock down. Birmingham City Council closed the household recycling centres on March 24 along with other local authorities following an announcement from Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

A boat has been dumped at the side of a busy Edinburgh road as fly tippers continue to litter the Capital during the coronavirus pandemic. Locals spotted the small vessel - which had its outboard motor removed and a trailer attached - after it was discarded by the roadside at Barnton Gardens earlier this week, despite environmental chiefs promising a crackdown on illegal disposals.

Carpets, cushions, bed frames and mattresses strewn across a country lane give a sad illustration of how the blight of fly-tipping has exploded under the lockdown. The snap of the mindless act just outside Bolsover, Derbyshire, emerged after the ClearWaste app revealed cases have soared an average 75% – with some London boroughs hit by 100% increases. The alarming surge was driven by closures of tips and fewer bin collections under the Covid-19 lockdown, plus more waste being generated as self-isolating people did clear-outs, DIY and gardening.

Pressure mounted on Scotland to follow the lead of the rest of the UK yesterday when Environment Secretary George Eustice confirmed that taking rubbish to official dumps was “essential travel” – along with shopping, exercise and medical need. Pictures from up and down Scotland show how louts are showing contempt for the countryside by tipping black bags, broken tellies and fridges in country lanes.

This week the government told councils to prepare to reopen tips after seeing an increase in fly-tipping since the lockdown, a problem highlighted after an eco-conscious man created new app 'ClearWaste'. Despite the crisis, CEO and founder of ClearWaste Martin Montague, of Hampshire, remains determined to do all he can to prevent the illegal dumping of waste, after seeing the problem first hand when he moved to the countryside from London.

Complaints about fly-tipping in Sheffield have fallen during the coronavirus lockdown, bucking the national trend, new figures reveal. The Countryside Alliance reported that fly-tipping had risen by 76 per cent nationally, according to statistics from the reporting app ClearWaste. But Sheffield Council revealed there had been 791 incidents in the month to April 28 this year, compared with 1,053 during the same period in 2019 – a drop of nearly a quarter.

Illegal dumping of waste in the countryside has nearly doubled in Scotland since the coronavirus pandemic lockdown as most recycling centres have shut and more than half of the nation's 32 local authorities have cut waste collections. Clearwaste.com, the fly-tipping reporting website, has revealed that reports of indiscriminate fly-tipping across Scotland has risen by 83% as local authorities cut back on waste disposal.

Birmingham City Council closed the household recycling centres on March 24 along with other local authorities following an announcement from Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The council is continuing to provide waste and recycling collection services though it has suspended new subscriptions for garden waste collection.