Almeno 8.000 siti di rifiuti illegali nel Regno Unito, suggerisce una ricerca | Sciupare

I think these guys are absolute scum and should be prosecuted. But look at the maths: the tax alone on dumping a tonne of waste is £126. Add the landfill’s gate fee and you’re at about £230–£275 per tonne. Then you’re also paying someone to actually collect and haul the waste.

So a legit company might be paying around £650 per tonne all-in, while some cowboy outfit can charge £450 and still make a tidy profit because they’re just dumping it in a field somewhere. If the penalties are high but the chances of getting caught are low, you can see exactly why this keeps happening.

It’s the same dynamic as illegal cigarettes: make the taxes so prohibitively high that people decide it’s worth the risk to ignore them. Or as Princess Leia says to Grand Moff Tarkin: “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

Laws are pointless if no resource is used to enforce them. We have loads of laws in this country but do very little on enforcement.