Nature

[Deej92]

I get annoyed with fly-tipping as well. I'm not sure people dumping a sofa or other bits of furniture is anything to do with less frequent bin collections. My council has a specific service for bulky waste collections, where you can arrange for a council worker to come round and collect the items. There is a fee of £20 for the service though and they can collect up to four items in one collection. So, I don't think there's any excuse for fly-tipping. It's illegal and damaging to the environment.

[Julie2owlsdene]

Some people just won't pay for the council to collect their unwanted goods, and yet they'll spend the money on petrol to get out into the countryside to do so. Just shows the mentality of these people!!!

[Moonraker]

A lot of fly-tipping is done by unscrupulous 'odd-job men'. Local recycling centres do not accept rubbish from tradesmen, and they have to pay to dispose of waste. Instead of paying, they dump in in the countryside.

[Rob Houghton]

Most of the fly-tipping in the country lanes around where I live is done by tradesmen. Sometimes 10 fridge freezers or washing machines are dumped in a lane completely blocking it - not the work of your average householder!

[Courtenay]

Back in Melbourne, we have "hard rubbish collection days" scheduled by the local councils at least twice a year, I think (depending on which council area you live in). That's when all items too large to be collected in ordinary waste — including old furniture, disused white goods and the like — can be put out by the roadside to be picked up on this special collection day free of charge. It means a lot of clutter along the roadsides for a short time, but it does help to deter people from dumping it elsewhere (at other times you have to pay to dispose of large waste items). I've never heard the term "fly tipping" in Australia — I think we would just say "illegal dumping" — but of course it goes on.

Mind you, the fun part of hard rubbish collection day is that many people put out their items a few days in advance of the collection date, and since it's generally accepted in the community that anything put out as hard rubbish is fair game for anyone who wants it, one can sometimes salvage an item that is still useful and worth having, for free. One time my family and I found a really nice dressing table that someone had dumped further down the road from our Melbourne property, so we all carried it back for my sister's room. Another time, some years later when I had my own flat in another part of Melbourne, I scored an excellent suitcase in near perfect condition from a hard rubbish pile, just when I was needing a bigger one. Do any local councils in Britain have similar schemes?

[Rob Houghton]

I think in Britain the council only do these collections from council properties. No idea why this is the case...maybe from the days when council house occupiers didn't have their own transport. I guess many of them still don't, but as far as I know a similar scheme isn't available to house owners, only council tenants.

On the council estate near where I live, there are often settees and tables and old beds and cupboards left dumped outside of properties, waiting for the council van to pick them up. Sometimes, as you say, there are some really nice pieces of furniture - but these soon disappear before the council wagons even come along!

[Carlotta King]

I think the other option in this country is to donate your furniture to places that can resell it (assuming its in fair condition), like the British Heart Foundation, they have a big furniture shop near where I live.
Also you can donate to places that give your furniture to people on low incomes who need furniture. I had no idea about these schemes til recently because my mum and dad have just bought a holiday lodge and my mum was thinking about getting new furniture in it, and so we were looking into how and where to get rid of furniture and large items etc.
The companies will collect your stuff in a van.

These schemes are only for stuff that's still usable though, as far as I know we don't have anything for large items that aren't usable.
My neighbour recently renovated his flat and took all the large rubbish somewhere himself, no one collected it.

[Fiona1986]

When we bought our flat we ended up with a cooker, fridge freezer and washing machine. We called a local charity who came and took them away and passed them on to someone who needed them.

[Anita Bensoussane]

We've twice tried to donate old beds to charity, but on both occasions we were told they weren't in good enough condition!

[Wolfgang]

Our local garbage collection company offers to collect 20 m³ of bulky garbage 2 times per year.
When I was a child you'd find books and magazines and other useful stuff that you'd take.
The services are now that nobody is allowed to take the garbage, it's property of the local garbage collection company.

[John Pickup]

When my mother had to give up her bungalow to go and live in her care home, I donated her furniture to Home Start who help people in financial difficulties furnish their homes. They just turned up in a lorry and took it away.

[number 6]

Fly tipping is something I really detest, especially when I used to work full time in Conservation. Imagine my horror & annoyance when I'd spent all day cleaning rubbish from a Nature Reserve car park, only to find even more rubbish the following day! Makes my blood boil.

[Deej92]

Some people just won't pay for the council to collect their unwanted goods, and yet they'll spend the money on petrol to get out into the countryside to do so. Just shows the mentality of these people!!!

Exactly my thoughts, Julie! I wrote a story last year on some of the strange items dumped by fly-tippers in Gwynedd. They included a cyberman helmet (yes you read that correctly), cannabis leaves, a fish tank, 17 fridges and a hamster's cage. You couldn't make it up

[Courtenay]

Maybe the Cyberman helmet could be used as a warning for what will happen to other fly-tippers...

[Deej92]

I wish councils would adopt that poster, Courtenay! Brilliant