To expect people to dispose of junk properly

When I was walking my friends dogs in the Forestry Commission is was often left incandescent with rage to see beautiful country side marred by dumped rubbish and fly tipping. Old mattresses, a micro wave and even a full size built in double oven!

So many people seem to do this don't they?At least they seem to have got rid of that naughty person[Bill] who when I was a child left waste paper everywhere, remember him , Bill Stickers? In the end he must have been found and prosecuted. Went past a lay by the other day, and saw several large black bags dumped there. Probably just rubbish that some lazy person wants rid of,but if it's still there tomorrow will let the council know.These things attract rats.

I know how you feel Harrigran! We live on a canal bank, and regularly walk round to the front of our house, an end terraced, to find bin bags full of rubbish just dumped right outside our front door. Even reporting it to the council it can take up to a couple of days for it to be removed. Just past our row of houses a new estate has gone up, with a six foot, or maybe a bit more, wall around it, flower beds have been laid in front of this wall, but folk dump rubbish bags, mattresses, etc., there on a regular basis, makes me SEETHE!!!

Where we live the council will collect an unlimited number of large household items free of charge. And yet a year or so ago someone dumped a piano at the end of our road, and someone else dumped a mattress on a busy main road.

When I was a child my mother and I would often spend a whole bus journey discussing the possible fate of poor Bill Stickers, and of course his less notorious cousin Bill Posters.

I just wonder why it is, if they can get things far enough to dump them. then they obviously have the transport and the 'man-power' to transport the rubbish, so why do they not take it to the tip - there are lots of amenity tips around these days for folk to use. In our old home, our garden backed onto a road, and I was constantly clearing up drink cans, plastic bags and wrappings, someone even filled some carrier bags with wallpaper stripped from walls and placed them over the fence - which was about 6 ft. high!

harrigran I think it is because you may have to pay to dump stuff in an official place, not sure though. The worse thing when people do this is that it attracts mice and rats, are you going to report him?

Amenity sites as a rule don't charge unless you're a builder disposing of trade waste. Here the council charges for the removal of large items like redundant white goods. Retailers will often remove these when you buy a new appliance, though there could be a charge - in the case of JL, this is less than the council charges. There will always be people who won't pay to have their items removed and will dump it wherever they think they can get away with it. I'm glad you had the CCTV on your fly-tipper, harrigran. I am sure you will be informing your local waste disposal authority.

Several hours later we saw a woman come and rake through the junk and actually picked up an item and went and put it in the boot of her car. There is no accounting for taste. He was either incredibly cheeky or extremely stupid as there are four cameras on our house.
There are motorists who come and spend ages parking their cars under the gable end camera so the cars are safe

Our council tip is a couple of miles out of town, people obviously can`t be bothered to drive out there, they prefer to come here in the dead of night. Not nice to plonk it outside someone`s front door though, we don`t have a garden, or a footpath, we step straight out the door onto the road, and that`s where hey leave their rubbish, outside our front door!

We live on a quite busy main road, and if anyone hires a skip for a couple of days for whatever reason and it's parked outside their house, it's filled up overnight by opportunist dumpers!

What is funny is the number of people who stop and rummage through what's been put in there - as harrigran says, no accounting for taste...

Our council charges an exorbitant fee for taking away your unwanted furniture/white goods etc. Charities will usually do it for free if it's saleable.

I saw a fly tipper in Southport behind the funfair. I noted down the company name and number from the side of the van. I rang the local council who thanked me but said they could not do anything because I did not have a photo! They did say they would move the rubbish though.

Harrigran and Ana - Re taking discarded objects from a skip - is this still illegal?
I knew someone who was convicted of taking a discarded door, he was fined and lost his job too (he was a Social Worker.)

Never thought about it Tricia, I guess it happens all the time. When we had work done on our house the skip stood on the front grass and every day a scrapman would appear in the garden looking and taking what took his fancy.

Just a thought from a newby. We have lived in France for over ten years, and I can only speak for my area...the Southwest, but every village here has a recycling depot ..well ours has two within a couple of hundred yards of each other for some reason, and we are not a big village, but people are very circumspect about recycling. There is also an immaculately maintained big 'dechetterie' about 6 kilometres away which serves the area in which you are registered for council tax. The dechetterie has the usual bins for green stuff, encoumbrants which is household junk, and recyclable metal..... usually old bikes. These facilities are obviously paid for through the council tax, which I have to say is a lot less than in the UK.

Anything with a spark of life left in it, such as furniture, garden equipment, the local Emmaus will collect for free and they are also a jolly good place for picking up an old table, sofa or chest of drawers to re-furbish for just a few euros. I know the Sally Army used to do this in the Uk... do they still?

Forty-odd years ago when we used to come to France on holiday fly-tipping was common but because we are not directly charged for disposal of large items this problem has all but disappeared.

The French may have been late to the party but they seem to have embraced it wholeheartedly now they have actually arrived.

BTW I've just realised... for some strange reason I haven't seen a skip outside a house since I left the UK.

absentgrandma - that's what we've seen here too (also SW France.)
There are also schemes for sorting and recycling clothes, linens and furniture for those people who can't afford to buy new.
Our dechetterie has a new giant container for usable furniture.
There are containers for used cooking oil .
One thing in which France is ahead of UK, probably because it's basically a socialist country.

We have a RSPCA charity shop in our town which takes furniture, clothes, bric a brac etc & the rubbish that people leave outside the shop, particularly at the weekend is appalling, I'm talking about "stuff" that should go to the tip, but bone idle so & so's are so lazy, they can't be bothered. The charity has to pay the fees at the tip, to get rid of the rubbish as they are not disposing of their own general house hold waste. People also leave furniture & bags of clothes outside, despite notices banning fly tipping, (perhaps they can't read !) . A few months ago my DH saw somebody dumping items outside the shop & started to take a photo of the dumper & his car, the dumper became most indignant, & after a few words with DH, angrily threw everything back in his car . No doubt he came back later to dispose of his "stuff". I've been amazed sometimes , on a Sunday morning, on my way to church, to see items outside the shop, that on my return, have been riffled through & taken , or should I say stolen!

I don`t know if it`s true to life or not, but watching Neighbours, they have "trash" days there, they put out on the street things they don`t want, and people come around and take anything that they fancy. I presume that whatever`s left they take to the dump?