“Waste Crime Problem Increasing”: Peter Taylor

The BBC has followed up its investigation into tyre dumping scams in North Wales on the Radio 4 consumer affairs programme, You and Yours including a statement from the secretary general of the Tyre Recovery Association, Peter Taylor. The segment was broadcast on 23 September and can be heard on Auntie’s splendid iPlayer, using the link at the bottom of the page (segment begins at circa 45 minutes).

Responding to reports that “thousands of car tyres are being dumped in Wales” as part of a scam in which faux collectors undercut dealer disposal prices, Taylor said that “the problem is increasing in scale… It’s becoming more sophisticated.” While the UK reuses or reprocesses over 500,000 tonnes of tyres yearly, the vast majority of which is done by TRA members, some garages have been paying what appear to be genuine dealers to take away waste tyres. Taylor says that the “dealers” are “doing it rather cleverly” by pitching their prices “just below the market level.” It is, he concluded, “becoming rather a profitable ploy for them.”

In response, Liz Parks from the Environment Agency stated that a National Environmental Crime team had been set up to deal with problems such as those described by the report, and that it had yielded a “number of successful prosecutions recently. However, this was of small comfort to Maria Burt, who has been left with 20,000 illegally-stored waste tyres, after the scammers renting land from her escaped to Majorca. No solution was suggested for Burt, who is currently responsible for footing the Environment Agency’s £20,000 bill to remove the tyres.

Related News: House Waste Tyres at Your Peril, Says BBC Report

Hear You and Yours on the BBC’s iPlayer here.