British farmers are living in fear because the “London trash mafia” which is engaging in industrial-scale rubbish dumping in the area.
Prominent East End London gangsters are thought to be behind the illegal racket, in which trucks laden with dumpsters are invading fields at night and leaving hundreds of tons of waste behind. Experts claim the “business” is worth up to $1.20 billion, The Times reported.
Farmers in Essex county, outside London, claim there have been more than 100 cases of “industrial-scale fly-tipping” since September. Adam Scott, of the National Farmers Union (NFU) said, “This is serious, organized crime and they are making serious amounts of money.”
Unlike regular illegal waste dumping that comes from vans and cars, the waste arriving on Essex farms is coming in eight-wheeled trucks with hydraulic lifts.
“It’s not coming straight from a site clearance,” Mr Scott added. “It appears to be coming from a recycling site.”
Numerous farmers claimed they are scared of confronting the trash mafia terrorizing the area out of fears that it’s linked to a major London crime boss.
“These are really nasty pieces of work,” Will Dickinson, chairman of an East Anglian forum for the NFU, said. “Our members are worried about confronting them [lest] their legs end up in concrete.”
One farmer, Phil Cottey, said the waste the mafia left it was so thoroughly compressed it looked like a giant building block. “They had perfectly straight edges, as though it had been packed by a machine. It was like tipping out a sandcastle.”
One of the loads, according to the reports, was almost entirely made up of gypsum plasterboard, which is illegal to dump in landfill sites.
“It’s because of the landfill tax,” Rob Stacey, whose farm is near Mr Cottey’s, said. “It costs an awful lot of money to tip industrial waste into landfill. It’s easier for them to tip it into the countryside.”
“We know people are going out and areas are being reconnoitered for it to take place,” he added. “We are told to lock up your fields, lock up your gates, but these guys drive straight through. The only way you can do it is by declaring your farm a fortress and dig a big moat.”
To fight the illegal dumping of waste, police in Hertfordshire have installed covert cameras to catch the criminals. The local council claimed there had been 400 cases of illegal fly-tipping since September, but mostly on a smaller scale than in Essex.
Across Britain, there have recently been more than 900,000 recorded cases of illegal waste disposal, according to the charity Keep Britain Tidy. Charity’s deputy director, Richard McIlwain, said the criminals “were often organized and often criminals into a wider spectrum of crime”.
“They see illegal waste disposal as just another route to short-circuit the system and make money,” he added.
Officials at the UK’s Environment Agency have described the waste crime as the “new narcotics”, which has a cost of £1 billion to the economy.
Head of Environment Agency Sir James Bevan said “the system hadn’t quite woken up to the enormity of what was going on and was racing to catch up”.
