The UK government is pulling together an elite squad of drone operators to crack down on the scourge of fly tippers and unauthorized dumpers across this ever less green and pleasant land.
The top drawer cadre of joystick jockeys will “track down illegal dumps from the air,” the Environment Agency said, as part of a “major crackdown on waste crime.”
Some of the drones will be upgraded with laser mapping technology, including LIDAR, the EA said, while the agency will also deploy “a new screening tool that enables EA officers to scan and cross-check lorry license applications against waste permit records.” This means suspect operators will be flagged “before they have a chance to move waste illegally.”
From the government’s point of view, illegal fly tipping and dumping is now in the realms of organized crime. The government is increasing the Environment Agency’s enforcement budget by half to more than £15.6 million. The motivation is often to avoid landfill charges, and criminals can make as much as £2,500 per lorry load of waste by billing customers for legal landfill, then diverting it to illegal dumps.
“With organized criminals becoming ever more sophisticated, we are adopting new technologies to find and, importantly, stop them,” said Phil Davies, Head of the Joint Unit for Waste Crime.
Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds said, “From advanced laser-mapping to drone surveillance and new vehicle-scanning tools, this technology is helping us track, expose and stop waste crime, ensuring those who blight our communities are held to account.”
Earlier this week, Varun Datta, 36, of Little Chester Street, London, was told he must pay £1.1 million by way of a confiscation order, and given a four month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months. He had earlier pleaded guilty to knowingly causing 4,275 metric tons of controlled waste to be deposited at a network of 16 sites. Datta must also pay £100,000 in compensation and £200,000 in prosecution costs. It’s not just the UK that is facing the problem of unscrupulous operators dumping waste. This week it emerged that a man in Sicily had trained his dog to dump plastic bags of waste by the roadside, evading CCTV cameras installed to catch flytippers in the process.
The camera-dodging canine was captured illicitly offloading at least twice in the San Giorgio district of Catania, according to reports. His owner was tracked down and fined. Which just illustrates the high stake nature of this crime. In fact, the combination of high-tech, canine cunning, and illicit dumping is truly apocalyptic. Let’s just hope the robo dogs being let loose on the UK’s premier nuclear waste site don’t get a whiff of it. Drones versus nuclear robo mutts sounds like a truly rubbish movie. ®
