Trucks illegally dumped waste on a Kent beach. Experts say gangs profit from illegal tipping, impacting the environment.
They walked along the beach, which featured colorful huts. They looked for strange waste among the pebbles. It wasn’t normal litter but building materials and household trash.
Trucks dumped the waste there from 2020 to 2023, up the coast near Eastchurch Gap. Chris found pipes, plastic, and cable ties, describing the situation as awful.
Belinda Lamb organizes clean-ups and saw Christmas trees and carpet pieces. She even saw material from playgrounds and thinks it impacts marine life. Fish eat the plastic, then we do too.
Trucks started dumping waste five years ago by the cliffs at Eastchurch Gap. They dumped rotting trash and plastic, and the sea carried it down the beach. Locals feel angry and let down.
Volunteers clean monthly, but the sea refills it. They worry the area will stay like this, and it’s an important scientific site.
Elliott Jayes leads the local council, stating the dumping should have stopped fast. He believes the Environment Agency should have stopped it and that prosecutions should have begun at once.
Investigations are happening now. In 2023, the site was closed for six months by court order. The order got extended, and the gate is now locked with concrete blocks to stop vehicles.
The people behind the dumping are unknown. Illegal dumping is a big national issue that criminal gangs exploit. It’s a low-risk, high-reward crime.
Sam Corp works for an environment group and sees organized crime in the waste sector. Someone at the Environment Agency called it “new narcotics.” Waste criminals do money laundering and human trafficking.
One-fifth of England’s waste is illegally managed, amounting to 34 million tons each year. This could fill four million skips, and the economy loses about a billion pounds. Legitimate businesses lose even more.
Waste crimes include illegal fires and exporting waste. Some send waste to countries with weak rules, where criminal gangs are a big factor.
Stuart Hayward-Higham works for a waste company and explained how gangs operate. They offer to pick up waste for a fee, charging a proper disposal price, but they dump the waste instead, keeping the profit for themselves.
Criminals can get managing licenses easily and make huge profits this way. They might make millions of pounds through these illegal activities.
Sam Corp thinks authorities lack resources and that the Environment Agency needs more money. They need to tackle this big problem, and regulations need to be tougher and enforced. The penalties are too low.
Criminals see fines as a business cost. Of 1,453 illegal sites, few led to enforcement; some got warning letters or advice. Many were linked to organized crime, with some holding hazardous waste while others were in rivers.
An Environment Agency spokesperson called waste crime toxic and said it harms people and the environment. They want to stop illegal activity and, last year, closed many illegal waste sites.