The chairman of a beach cleaning charity feels the only way to tackle fly-tipping is to ’make an example’ of someone who has done it.
Bill Dale, founder of Beach Buddies, said there’s a lack of accountability for those who illegally dump waste.
He said: ’Someone needs to be caught, taken to court and fined a heavy amount to set an example.
’At the moment there’s no accountability.’
Mr Dale explained that the act of fly-tipping has always been a problem.
He continued: ’It’s never really been a situation anyone has been able to sort out around the world, it’s not only the Isle of Man, this is a problem everywhere.
’There’s been a number of televisions and things that we’ve seen over places like the side of the road at Marine Drive.
’People clearly don’t want to be dealing with [taking it to an amenity site].’
The fine for fly-tipping currently stands at £2,000.
’I think what we’ve got to do is, one of the things I’ve been saying for a long time is, people have been caught fly-tipping because they’ve left the address of their business or their bank details on the machine, but everyone’s been given a "don’t do it again, we’ve caught you this time", slap your hand and away they go,’ Mr Dale said. ’Somewhere some poor, unfortunate soul is going to have to go to court and be hammered for this because it’s unacceptable.’
This follows after charges for the disposal of fridges, freezers, televisions, laptops and computer monitors as much as doubled, as was reported in the Manx Independent this week. The appointment of a new contractor has led to an increase in charges for these items to be disposed of at civic amenity sites across the island.
Mr Dale stressed illegally dumping waste was unacceptable, even with the increased charges. He added: ’Fly-tipping is unacceptable whatever the reason.
’Even if they think it’s too expensive to take it to the tip, it is unacceptable.’
He felt more CCTV should be implemented in more remote places.
Mr Dale continued: ’I think it’s long past time we made an example of somebody and that’s not just fly-tipping, that’s just general chucking rubbish out of car windows as well. If we put more CCTV cameras at places like the Mountain Road, you’ll catch any number of people.
’You catch one and they get fined £500 or £1,000 or whatever and their name’s in the newspaper, I think you’ll bring the whole thing to a very quick end.’
When Beach Buddies, the charity focused on cleaning up the island’s beaches of litter, finds items that have been fly-tipped they take them to an amenity site but they have found ’very little’ incidences of fly-tipping recently.
’Only every once in a while. It’s a rare thing to find fly-tipping, it’s not common, but what a hell of a mess it makes, when it does occur,’ Mr Dale said.