Agency crack down on waste crime

The Waste crime report 2012/2013 has been published by the Environment Agency and shows how they've been tackling waste crime over the past year. Such crimes are committed, according to the report, every time someone deliberately fails to deal with waste in accordance with the law.

The report shows that the Environment Agency has been particularly busy, stopping illegal activity on illegal waste sites every 90 minutes in every working day. Overall, illegal waste activity was halted on 1,279 illegal waste sites during the course of the year, compared to 670 sites in 2011/12.

In addition, the report shows that:

• 28% of illegal waste sites had construction and demolition as their main waste type, end of life vehicles made up 25% with household/commercial waste coming a close third (24%);
• the Agency dealt with 107 incidents of large-scale illegal waste dumping;
• 23% of the large-scale illegal waste dumping incidents dealt with involved waste from construction, demolition and excavation activities;
• local authorities dealt with just over 688,000 fly-tipping incidents; and
• for all aspects of waste crime, the Agency had 171 successful prosecutions and issued 62 formal cautions.

Ed Mitchell, Director of environment and business at the Environment Agency, said, "Waste crime puts people and the environment at risk and undermines the legitimate waste industry. We are taking tough action to deal with this problem, through the improved use of intelligence and stronger partnerships with the police and other enforcement bodies. The taskforce has been hugely successful in slashing the number of illegal waste sites operating in England."

For more information, see the:

• Agency's waste crime report 2012/2013.
• End-of-Life Vehicles Regulations SI 2003/2635;
• Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations SI 2010/675;
• Waste (England and Wales) Regulations SI 2011/988.