England is grappling with a fly-tipping crisis that has reached unprecedented levels. Local authorities dealt with 1.15 million incidents in 2023-24, a six per cent increase from the previous year's 1.08 million.
This record-high figure reveals a country increasingly scarred by illegal waste dumping.
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The London borough of Croydon has emerged as England's fly-tipping capital, with 35,470 incidents reported in the past year according to February figures.
Only Camden, Hackney, and Nottingham surpassed the 30,000 mark nationwide.
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The majority of incidents, some 60 per cent, involved household waste. Pavements and roads are the most common dumping sites.
While some fly-tipping is done by individuals, this is far from the complete picture.
Operating in the shadows is a network of organised criminals who are paid by residents to dispose of bulky items.
The problem mirrors the mafia's historic control of waste disposal in New York and Italy, where a gangster once declared: "For us, rubbish is gold."
As early as 2018, Sir James Bevan, then chief executive of the Environment Agency, referred to serious waste crime as "the new narcotics."
Michael Gove, then environment secretary, warned that criminals were using illegal waste sites to cover up theft, human trafficking, drug running and money laundering.
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Phil Davies, head of the joint unit for waste crime, told the BBC last month that many involved have international connections and use the waste industry "to launder money and fuel other illegal activities."
In total, waste crime is estimated to cost the economy in England as much as £1 billion annually.
Almost a fifth of all waste in England is illegally managed, equating to about 34 million tonnes annually - enough to fill some four million skips.
The criminal operation often begins with householders unwittingly paying unregistered collectors to remove waste.
Sam Corp, head of regulation at the Environmental Services Association, explains that becoming a waste collector is too easy: "It gives you a veneer of legitimacy... It's not a particularly high barrier to entry."
Criminals may simply dump collected waste in lay-bys or farmers' fields, with 52 per cent of farmers reporting fly-tipping on their land.
More sophisticated operations involve tax evasion at transfer stations, where waste is shredded to appear like rubble, qualifying for lower landfill tax rates.
The Environment Agency has recorded 1,453 illegal dump sites over the last decade.
Organised criminals regard fines for fly-tipping as merely business expenses, according to MPs on the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee.
In 2023-24, some 63,000 fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping were issued in England.
A report by LoveJunk found that 59 per cent of councils did not prosecute anyone for fly-tipping in 2023.
Of prosecutions brought, only one per cent resulted in custodial sentences.
John Read, founder of Clean Up Britain, is scathing about the political establishment's failure to tackle this "serious problem."
"We've got to get serious with fines and make it an offence that's so risky people stop doing it," he says.
Government plans to introduce digital waste tracking have been delayed by another year.
The Environment Agency needs more resources to battle the problem, experts argue.
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