Posted on by Neil Horton

Crime Not To Care Campaign

It’s a #CrimeNotToCare when it comes to getting rid of your rubbish. In the month of March Harrogate Borough Council (HBC) are launching a campaign to tackle the epidemic of fly tipping that is affecting communities up and down the country. In the HBC District in the past 12 months there have been just over 570 incidents of fly tipping and this has cost the council, i.e. the taxpayer, in the region of £40,000 to clear up.

#CrimeNotToCare, which is being run in partnership with environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy, aims to educate householders about the right thing to do with their rubbish and to reduce the amount of household waste that is fly-tipped by rogue traders who offer to take people’s waste away for money and then dump it. The campaign aims to get the message across that if an individual’s waste is fly tipped, even if they gave it to a third party to dispose of, they can be prosecuted and end up with a fine and a criminal record. A leaflet with further information is available here.

Keep Britain Tidy Chief Executive Allison Ogden-Newton said:

#CrimeNotToCare is an important campaign for our country and we are delighted that Harrogate Borough Council is partnering with us on it. There are almost a million fly-tipping incidents in England every year and cleaning it all up costs us £50million a year. It blights communities and our countryside and is a menace. We need the public to understand that their rubbish is their responsibility and they must do the right thing with it.

Research carried out by Keep Britain Tidy showed that there is a staggering lack of understanding about the public’s role in preventing fly-tipping. More than a third of people thought it was OK to do things that are classed as fly-tipping, including leaving something outside because ‘the Council will take it away’ or ‘someone else might be able to use it’. They also had little understanding about their duty of care when handing over their rubbish to someone else, with almost 50% not knowing that they could be prosecuted if they handed over their rubbish to someone who subsequently fly tipped it.

Giving it to a ‘man with a van’ who offers to get rid of it cheaply could prove costly for people and result in them getting a criminal record. They have a duty of care and this campaign will help explain to them exactly what that is and how to protect themselves.

You will hopefully notice the above poster going up across the District, with the HBC’s bin wagons also helping to spreading the message. On Saturday 7th March 2020 Environmental Protection officers will be taking part in the Ripon Sights and Sounds event, located in the Library speaking to members of the public and informing them of their ‘duty of care’ responsibilities. They will also be in the centre of Harrogate at Prospect Crescent on Wednesday the 11th March 2020, Prospect Park Starbeck on Thursday the 12th March 2020, Knaresborough Market Place on the 20th March 2020 and Ripon Market Place on the 26th March 2020.

If you are free, please go along and meet the officers, and help spread the ‘CrimeNotToCare’ message. In addition if you have any questions regarding the campaign, please contact either of the HBC officers below.