Fly-tipping and the sociology of abandonment

Abstract

This article addresses a prominent gap in sociological studies of consumption and disposal. Whilst waste and disposal studies have traditionally focused on the production of waste or its subsequent treatment at municipal disposal facilities, little has focused sociologically on waste outside of these confines, such as littering and fly-tipping. Focusing on the latter, this article makes an original contribution by drawing on fly-tipping to demonstrate the need for further sociological study on material abandonment and its relevance for the fields of consumption and disposal, and more broadly issues of sustainability. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 14 local authority waste officers and local councillors, we argue that fly-tipping disrupts the usual linear pathways of consumption, occurring in transitional zones between the site of production/ownership of objects/materials (e.g. households, construction sites) and that of its acceptance and treatment into formal waste infrastructures (local authority waste processing). We illustrate how fly-tipping incorporates both aspects of disjuncture and abandonment but that it cannot simply be positioned as an act without care. We do this through a focus on three interconnected key facets of fly-tipping: (1) the complexity of defining; (2) issues of measurement and responsibility; and (3) socio-economic factors and the influence of the built environment.

Introduction

This article addresses a prominent gap in sociological studies of consumption and disposal. Whilst these fields are both rich and diverse, to date certain aspects of disposal remain under-researched – particularly that of abandonment. In this article we draw on the example of fly-tipping to illuminate material abandonment and its potential for sociology. Fly-tipping in the UK is a criminal offence that denotes the practice of residents and businesses depositing their household or bulky waste on roadsides, in fields and down alleyways instead of the designated bins or collection centres. Drawing on qualitative research from a 12-month project exploring predominantly household fly-tipping, our core argument focuses on the disruptive nature of fly-tipping events and practices, and how abandoned items disrupt the usual pathways of consumption and disposal. Through a focus on the ‘who, what, where’ and the ‘why’ of fly-tipping we illuminate the blurred lines of ownership of fly-tipped waste, caught in transitory spaces between the site of its production and its acceptance into formal waste infrastructures. We do this through a focus on three interconnected facets. These are: the complexity of defining fly-tipping; issues of measuring and assigning responsibility; and the role of socio-economic factors and the influence of the built environment. In doing so, we call for further sociological study into practices of material abandonment, such as fly-tipping, and their relevance for debates on consumption and disposal.

Fly-tipping is a key waste event happening 1.09 million times a year in the UK (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs [DEFRA], 2023), along with the 2.25 million pieces of litter estimated to be dropped every day (Keep Britain Tidy, 2023). Household waste accounted for 65% of fly-tipping events in 2020/21 with the remaining 35% attributed to commercial sources (DEFRA, 2022). Despite its regularity, fly-tipping remains relatively under-researched particularly from a sociological perspective. Whilst work on illegal dumping has emerged from the interdisciplinary field of discard studies (Crang et al., 2012; Liboiron & Lepawsky, 2022; Stamatopoulou-Robbins, 2019), a sociological critique of fly-tipping and, more pertinently, abandonment has yet to be undertaken. Sociological and geographical studies of disposal are somewhat polarised by focusing either on waste’s production (Gregson et al., 2007; Hawkins, 2012) or its subsequent treatment and acceptance into formal waste infrastructures (Bulkeley et al., 2005; Craighill & Powell, 1996). Abandoned items are a missing piece of the jigsaw of social science studies of consumption and disposal studies, which so far only work on lost property (Holmes & Ehgartner 2021) and invisible and hidden forms of materiality (Holmes, 2023) has begun to consider. Such work draws on the concept of the sociology of nothing (Scott, 2019), alongside Hetherington’s (2004) research on the absent presence of disposal to demonstrate the relational role that absent, missing or invisible objects and materials can play in people’s lives. To date this has not been extended to think explicitly about waste. Thus, there is a significant sociological gap regarding what happens when waste infrastructures are disregarded and disrupted through abandonment practices. Likewise, little up-to-date research on fly-tipping in the UK is available.

We address these gaps by focusing on the practices of fly-tipping and providing insight into the lived experiences of those responsible for dealing with it in the UK. Exploring the ‘who, what, where’ and the ‘why’ of fly-tipping practices, we illuminate the blurred lines of ownership of fly-tipped materials, occurring in physical and metaphorical transitional spaces, between the site of waste’s production/ownership (e.g. households, construction sites) and that of its acceptance and treatment into formal waste infrastructures (local authority waste processing facilities). This has a number of implications making fly-tipping difficult to define and measure but also creating ambiguities regarding who is responsible for dealing with it. Furthermore, we illuminate how social factors and myriad inequalities are interwoven with the complexities of understanding fly-tipping. We illuminate how current waste policies focused on ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ behaviours miss the nuance and context of people’s everyday lives. Whilst fly-tipping is both an urban and rural phenomenon, and includes both domestic and construction waste, our study is focused on urban, household-based fly-tipping events.

We begin by situating abandonment and fly-tipping in existing relevant literature. A discussion of our methodological approach follows, moving on to our three core empirical sections: firstly, defining and measuring fly-tipping; secondly, issues of assigning responsibility; and, thirdly, considering social factors and the influence of the built environment. We conclude with a summary and discussion of our core concerns before outlining a call for further focus on abandonment in sociological studies of consumption and disposal.

Positioning fly-tipping and object abandonment

Waste and disposal are undoubtedly growing areas of research within social science. Yet work on fly-tipping and dumping remains somewhat limited, particularly from sociology. As noted, work on the sociology of consumption and waste and disposal tends to focus on either the production of waste in the home or a commercial setting, or the processing and treatment of waste at formal facilities. What happens when formal waste infrastructures are subverted and disrupted and waste is abandoned remains somewhat under-researched.

Social science research on the production of waste is vast and varied. From work on household production, including food waste (Evans, 2014; Gregson et al., 2015), clothing (Gregson & Crewe, 2003) and household items (Gregson, 2011), to studies of commercially produced waste including asbestos (Gregson et al., 2010) and nuclear waste (Garcier, 2021), the production of waste has received much academic attention over the last two decades. In part, this focus on what has been termed the ‘backend of consumption’ (Evans, 2019) has been driven by a broader remit within studies of consumption to pay more attention to disposal. Whilst earlier studies on consumption paid attention to how goods are acquired, appropriated and appreciated – also known as Warde’s 3As (2014) – more recent studies have sought to explore how goods are devalued, divested and disposed of – the 3Ds (Evans, 2019). Born out of a wider focus within social science on the everyday, these studies have illuminated the practices of waste production and disposal with a focus on ordinary lived experiences, the minutiae of daily life and how they are impacted by wider norms, conventions and structures (Gronow & Warde, 2001; Hetherington, 2004).

Whilst far from discrete from work on the production of waste, the other prominent area of sociological waste research focuses on processing and governance. Such work charts the evolution of the current waste management infrastructure in the UK, from the advent of early recycling schemes in the 1970s (Watson, 2012), to the introduction of local authority-led kerbside collections in the 1980s (Craighill & Powell, 1996), and roll out of the Landfill Tax in 1996 (Bulkeley et al., 2005). An important feature within this work is how responsibilities for waste are negotiated and the effective transfer of ownership of waste materials when they leave the domain of the household or commercial site and enter that of the waste processor or handler. Research in this area has addressed issues including the blame placed on consumers and household for failures in waste management, for example inadequate recycling or reuse practices (Evans et al., 2017; Holmes et al., 2023: Holmes & Holmes, in press); the household political economy of waste and the consumption work this involves (Wheeler & Glucksmann, 2015); and, more broadly, waste markets and their economic, political and moral drivers (Burgess et al., 2021; Crang et al., 2012; Ehgartner & Holmes, 2022).

Much of this work connects to the broader interdisciplinary field of discard studies and it is here where literature on illegal dumping can be found. Discard studies seek to focus not solely on the materials of waste but the wider systems in which waste occurs and the human and non-human actors it involves. This interest in the ‘productive afterlife of waste’ (Reno, 2015, p. 558), links to further work on the circular economy of waste and studies which illuminate circular activities such as reuse, repair and upcycling (Holmes, 2018, 2023). Such studies span both the Global North and Global South and particularly with regard to the latter, often include a prominent focus on informal waste markets as enacting circular economies (Bebasari, 2019; Perczel, 2024) through activities such as waste picking and salvaging (Gregson et al., 2010).

This latter point is particularly pertinent for this article, in that informal waste markets on the scale of those found in the Global South do not exist in the UK. Whilst the UK engages in circular practices concerning ‘waste’ goods, such as car boot sales (Gregson et al., 2015), repair cafes (Spekkink et al., 2022) and upcycling practices, these are often ad hoc, community-driven activities motivated by a mix of sustainable, ethical and thrift-related reasons for keeping things in circulation (Holmes, 2018, 2019). The main differential is that these are not abandoned, ownerless items sitting in garbage dumps or waste mountains; they are surplus or ‘waste’ items which at some point will undergo a transfer of ownership. Perhaps the nearest the UK has to informal waste salvaging activities would be skip-diving – the act of taking discarded goods, often food, from skips (Lehtonen & Pyyhtinen, 2021). Also known as dumpster diving.

Social science work on illegal forms of dumping has been undertaken, but rarely in the UK. Indeed, as the lead author has found, the term fly-tipping seems particularly pertinent to the UK, with a recent conference presentation given in Sweden suggesting that this was not a term used in Scandinavia. Much of the literature on illegal dumping is focused on the Global South and on transnational waste movements from north to south, or from industrial centres to peripheries (Alexander & Reno, 2012; Crang et al., 2012; Liboiron & Lepawsky, 2022; Stamatopoulou-Robbins, 2019). Work in Poland (Kacperczyk & Zulicki, 2022) has assessed the spatial practices of illegal dumping, reaching a similar conclusion to ourselves with regard to contestations over space that dumping can create. Likewise, Ablitt and Smith’s (2019) study on street cleansing and discarded objects discusses the blurring of private and public spaces with regard to street cleansing operatives’ work. Whilst focused predominantly on litter and items of street dirt (e.g. blossom, dog dirt, bird carcasses), Ablitt and Smith also illuminate the ambiguities of working with waste – something we develop below. Emerging work from anthropology on the indeterminacy of waste and forms of waste that ‘resist classification’ (Alexander & Sanchez, 2018) is relevant to thinking about how fly-tipped items not only end up being abandoned but also the moral processes of classification which determine their abandoned status. Whilst work on littering similarly illuminates the ‘social disorder’ abandoned items are deemed to produce (Müller, 2015).

Quantitative work on fly-tipping in the UK also exists, but it is limited both by its approach and that in the main it is nearly 20 years out of date. Studies on fly-tipping as a criminal act (Watson, 2005), the environmental impact of fly-tipped waste (Webb et al., 2006) and the drivers of household fly-tipping (Hodsman & Williams, 2011) are all useful foundations for further study. The last mentioned study drew on over 900 household surveys in Hampshire, UK, alongside local authority and third sector questionnaires, finding that bulky items were most likely to be fly-tipped, highways and rural locations were the most popular locations and that fly-tipping was more likely to be considered an issue in areas of high deprivation, population density and with a large proportion of rented accommodation. Some of these findings we pick up on below. Despite their breadth these studies lack qualitative analysis of the social factors, impacts and, importantly, lived experiences of fly-tipping.

Thus, this article fills two predominant gaps in current research. Firstly, it develops a qualitative contemporary analysis of fly-tipping activities in the UK. Secondly, it draws on the example of fly-tipping to illuminate the potential of material abandonment for deepening and expanding sociological studies on waste and consumption. Whilst work is emerging on the relational role of invisible, hidden and absent objects and materials in the practices of consumption (see work on lost property in Holmes & Ehgartner, 2021; see also Smith, 2021), this has not been extended to think explicitly about waste. Bringing together Scott’s (2019) sociology of nothing and Hetherington’s (2004) study on absent presence, this work explores the connections and resonances of absent, invisible or transient things. In other work, the lead author (Holmes, 2023) discusses how waste can create disposal anxiety when people are presented with a plethora of disposal options and unsure which to choose, leaving feelings and resonances which can last over time, but this has not been extended to consider abandoned things. Thus, exploring fly-tipping as an act of abandonment seeks to expand sociological studies of consumption and disposal considering the spaces and inequalities of abandoned objects and the ambiguities of their ownership.

Methodology

This article is based on the initial findings of a 12-month study conducted in 2022/23 focused on fly-tipping in a prominent city in North-West England. Primary data collection involved conducting 12 in-depth interviews with 14 participants working in and dealing with fly-tipping as part of their professional roles, alongside site visits and work-shadowing (see Appendix). The interviews were conducted alongside systematic desk-based research of secondary sources, including existing data on fly-tipping and a review of relevant academic literature.

Participants were recruited using a snowball sample, drawing on the existing networks of the first author to engage with a range of people working in and engaged with the waste sector. Whilst also having an interest in fly-tipping from a professional capacity our participants range from waste officers, to enforcement and street cleansing operatives, to local councillors, across five neighbouring local authorities, encountering the issues associated with fly-tipping as part of their community roles. Table A1 in the Appendix provides anonymised information about our interviewees. Given the short-term nature of the study, the decision was taken to not engage with local residents regarding fly-tipping. This was due to ethical constraints in doing so, given that fly-tipping is an illegal practice and therefore would require extra university ethical approval. Rather, we decided to focus our attention on those encountering and experiencing fly-tipping as part of their professional role with a view to expanding our study to include local residents through a later, larger grant application. Being involved in fly-tipping as part of one’s daily job provides ample insight into fly-tipping practices, and also the views of local residents these professionals encounter. It may also lead to bias, given that fly-tipping is likely to become an everyday occurrence for such professionals and the abilities to ‘step back’ and apply objectivity to varying situations and circumstances may be limited.

All interviews took place in a space chosen by the participants – often in places of work or public settings. Most interviews lasted between one and two hours and all of them were audio-recorded. Following professional transcription, each interview was analysed, thematically coded by the co-author and discussed with the lead author. With regard to reflexivity and positionality, both authors are scholars of waste research and are familiar with the waste landscape and infrastructure within the UK. This has been helpful in building rapport with participants regarding their professional roles and responsibilities. The project was granted ethical approval by the University of Manchester.

The complexity of defining fly-tipping: The ambiguities of abandoned objects

In this first empirical section we focus on the ambiguity and complexity of defining fly-tipping to illuminate the disruption waste’s ‘abandonment’ can cause. We illustrate how whilst the legal definition of fly-tipping is clear – defined as the ‘illegal disposal of household, industrial, commercial or other ‘controlled’ waste’ (Smith, 2022, p. 2) – this definition gets broken down through the very practices of trying to deal with fly-tipped waste. It is also causes tensions between activities householders deem as correct waste practices and what local authorities determine as fly-tipping. We argue that this ambiguity is produced by and reproduces blurred boundaries of ownership of fly-tipped waste, revealing the transitory spaces of waste’s abandonment and the disruption it causes to the usual pathways of consumption and disposal. To do this we explore two interconnected aspects – focused on ‘the who, what, where’ of fly-tipping, followed by the complexities of trying to measure and assign responsibility for it.

The ‘who, what and where’ of fly-tipping is crucial to understanding the opacity around the practice. Classifying waste is an important part of a local authority’s reporting duties, enabling local, regional and national level statistics on the types of waste produced and how this waste is processed/recycled. Fly-tipping forms part of these statistics. As noted, most of our participants primarily dealt with household forms of fly-tipping as opposed to commercial (although distinctions are not always clear). As the following illustrates, issues arise as to what counts as household waste being ‘abandoned’ and fly-tipped:

A lot of fly-tipping is how you class fly-tipping, most councils now have a fairly strict policy. [. . .] Some people will then put out an extra black bag or if you have a lot of terraced properties they will have a communal collection point and then put all the bins out and leave a few black bags. Most councils are pragmatic and say to the waste collectors, ‘Just take them,’ because otherwise you will be reporting it, but essentially it is fly-tipping. (Ella, Fleet Services Manager)

. . . when you say fly-tipping, I think it kind of covers a number of different types of activity. Is it someone just throwing an extra bin bag in the back alley. . . because they’ve not got enough room in the bin and they’re not recycling? Is it because they’ve got a wardrobe and they don’t have a car and they think the best way to do it because they don’t want to pay for a bulky collection is to put it in the back alleyway? (George, Environmental Action Unit Manager)

Both of these interviews illuminate a key confusing aspect of defining fly-tipping – something which is referred to as ‘side waste’ (Keep Britain Tidy, 2023). According to the participants an extra black bin bag at the side of the bin or put out into communal waste collections areas is a form of side waste. Yet they are often classified as fly-tipping by local authorities. Whilst there are issues regarding whether this is reported as such (see following section on measurement and responsibility), this illuminates two key elements regarding ‘what’ is fly-tipped (scale) and ‘where’ it is fly-tipped (space).

In terms of the former, this is one, potentially a few, extra black bin bags of waste; it is not several bulky white goods or an old mattress. Most of our participants acknowledge that this is small-scale, fly-tipping behaviour and is not, as one participant put it, ‘for financial gain’ (Participant Peter). Such side waste could be attributed to accidental practices or carelessness, yet it is legally defined as fly-tipping and in some instances will be classified as such by some local authorities (but not all – see following section). This conveys the blurred boundaries of fly-tipping, based not just on the amount of waste fly-tipped, but also what that waste is, where it is placed and who has done it. This is households struggling to cope with bin provision, and placing everyday rubbish in designated waste collection spaces in the hope it will be picked up. As the first author discusses elsewhere, shrinking bin sizes in the UK are part of local authority strategies to encourage recycling (Holmes et al., 2023). Yet, as the example of side waste demonstrates, they often have adverse effects. As we discuss in our final empirical section, this cannot simply be understood as household carelessness and intentionally doing the ‘wrong thing’.

This also illustrates the fuzzy lines of ownership and its connections to space. Waste in a bin will be collected by the local authority. Waste outside of the bin, regardless of size, or contents, is classed as ‘abandoned’ and thus either littering if it is single items, or fly-tipping if it is multiple (e.g. large bulky items or visible household waste). As a recent House of Commons report (Smith, 2022) states, ‘littering is commonly assumed to include materials often associated with smoking, eating and drinking’. Under the duty of care as defined in law, any producer of waste has the responsibility to deal with their waste according to section 46 of the Environmental Protection Act. The Act stipulates how to use bins and what to put in them. Any rubbish that is not placed inside bins will be investigated to establish ownership of the waste and can invoke a fixed penalty notice. As a recent Keep Britain Tidy report on fly-tipping (2023) discusses, householders do not view waste they leave out on the street as fly-tipping – illuminating a disconnect between households and local authorities. To them waste left by the side of bins is seen as an extension of those bins and of the responsibilities of local authorities to deal with. Indeed, there is an argument to be made that this is not careless ‘abandonment’ but instead households trying to ‘do the right thing’ by putting extra bags of rubbish they cannot fit into their bins by the side of them to be collected (Holmes, 2023). Thus, what we see are moral subjectivities regarding the classification of waste (Alexander & Sanchez, 2018).

This notion of ownership and ‘what, where and who’ extends further when we consider other spaces, or the ‘where’, of household fly-tipping. As participant George mentions above – household goods can be left in alleyways and other communal spaces. Leaving an old wardrobe in a back-alley is likely to be categorised as an act of fly-tipping given its size and the location it is left in, yet this exemplifies that ‘public’ spaces are deemed the responsibility of the local authority. We pick up this notion later, but in relation to the complexities of defining fly-tipping this gives credence to contestations over public/private space. This is further illustrated by participant Ella, who notes that another difficulty is fly-tipping ‘accumulations in back gardens’. As Blomley (2004) discusses, public and private property are assumed to be ‘mutually exclusive and exhaustive’ (p. 281) and defined by ‘spatial markers’ (p. 283) such as fences, gardens. Whilst these are legally deemed as private space they have a more elusive quality. Accumulations in back gardens may be deemed a problematic eyesore but cannot easily be defined as fly-tipping, nor dealt with or measured as such. Thus alleyways, the sides of bins and back gardens become transitory zones: physical spaces of potential material ‘abandonment’ caught between the site of waste’s production/ownership and its acceptance into formal waste infrastructures. Side waste is emblematic of this disconnect between what the local authority may deem is fly-tipping and what local residents believe is acceptable practice.

Measurement and responsibility: Gaps in waste infrastructure

Building on the above, ambiguities regarding the classification of fly-tipping are further illuminated by considering measurement and responsibility. We argue that current infrastructural issues both exacerbate the complexities of adhering to the legal definition of fly-tipping in practice and are worsened by them. We illuminate some of the gaps in existing waste management systems and the pressures and tensions they perpetuate; reinforcing fly-tipping as an abandoned form of waste.

As indicated in the above quotes, the reporting and thus quantification of fly-tipping is determined by the subjectivity of the ‘who, what, where’ of fly-tipped waste. The odd black bin bag by the side of a bin may be taken away by bin operatives and not flagged as fly-tipping, whilst the wardrobe in the back-alley may be. This subjectivity seemingly occurs across the measurement system:

A lot of fly-tipping will go unreported, some people will report a carrier bag full of waste as fly-tipping, strictly speaking it probably is, whereas councils will log it as that but some councils might not choose to. (Ella, Fleet Services Manager)

So if we’ve got a number of jobs to be doing, we’ll go to that job and then we’ll go to that job and then we’ll go that job and then we’ll clean up and clear up. Now fly-tipping might be job number 2 or job number 5 or job number 7 but we haven’t got very sophisticated systems. . . to, well, split up what the definition of fly-tipping is out of our actual operation. . . I think the data you’re probably dealing with has so many variables and considerations it’s difficult to actually say this is fly-tipping and this is how much there is of it. (George, Environmental Action Unit Manager)

From subjective decisions made at the point of reporting fly-tipping, to systems which cannot deal with different types of waste occurrences, these quotes illustrate the difficulties and ambiguities in measuring fly-tipping. Whilst waste operatives may quickly be able to identify side waste from other forms of fly-tipping – as per Ella’s quote – they can be restricted by how their local authority wishes them to categorise it. As George notes, waste teams are similarly restricted by unsophisticated systems which hinder accurate reporting. Such systems also differ between different local authorities adding to the unevenness of data. There are ‘so many variables and considerations’ (George) that trying to quantify fly-tipping is challenging. This is further complicated when one considers that local authorities do not deal with fly-tipping on private land or at an industrial scale – the latter supposedly the remit of the Environment Agency (Webb et al., 2006), although it is not clear how large ‘industrial scale’ actually is.

These ‘gaps’ in measuring fly-tipping in turn feed into ambiguities regarding who is responsible for dealing with it. Just as subjective decisions are made regarding measurement, so they are also made regarding whether fly-tipping should be removed or not:

The controversial bit for us is, maybe the bin operatives need to start picking the bin bags up. I don’t know what it’s like in other areas, but one of the things in this borough is, the bin collections tend to leave the bin bags on the floor even when somebody has made the effort to take it to the collection point. If a wagon comes along to pick it up, they don’t pick it up because they’re running round. . . (Peter, Environmental Manager Street Cleansing Service)

As Peter notes, certain teams may refuse to accept that particular types of waste are part of their remit, in this instance bin operatives instead drive past, leaving them for the fly-tipping teams. Whilst others doing the same job may accept them as part of kerbside waste. Participant Ella concurs, discussing how some councils are pragmatic over incidents such as ‘side waste’ choosing to remove them, but this is not always the case. Rather subjective decisions are made by different departments within local authorities and also different collection teams in the same local authority. This could of course be attributed to a lack of resources, given that local authority waste budgets have been drastically cut over the last decade (Zaharudin et al., 2022). It could also be due to the sheer volume of work. As Peter explains, he has ‘two teams running fly tip clearance 7 days a week, 10.5 hours a day, 363 days of the year’. Yet this also seems to be influenced heavily by the pressures of targets, as participant Harold discusses:

We’re challenged to hit 55% and that number will go up. If you want to give yourself half a chance of doing that, then you can’t collect fly-tipping. If you collect everything presented around the bins, that will increase the tonnages of your general waste stream which will mean that percentage wise, you are recycling less. (Harold, Environmental Action Unit Manager)

As Harold illustrates, alongside budget cuts and increased volumes of work, local authorities are also trying to hit specific government targets. Here we see how the impact of one set of policies – recycling targets – puts pressures on other areas of waste management. Local authorities may feel forced to classify side waste as fly-tipping and not collect it as part of kerbside collection to reduce general waste tonnage and improve recycling figures. Thus, pressure from broader local authority policies and targets influences how fly-tipping is dealt with and measured.

Other ‘gaps’ and tensions that participants discussed focused on larger scale commercial forms of fly-tipping. This included holding the perpetrators of fly-tipping accountable and dealing with fly-tipping on unregistered land. With the former, participants spoke at length of the difficulties in prosecuting fly-tippers. Issues including finding sufficient evidence, potential intimidation of witnesses and accidental fly-tipping where unscrupulous commercial contractors dump waste from work they have done for households or other businesses and those households/businesses get blamed, all add further tensions to a fractured approach. As participant Susan (Enforcement and Compliance Officer) notes, it ‘can take 18 months before it goes through to our legal team to process it to court for prosecution’ and often cases are ‘inadmissible in court’. With the latter, tensions occur because fly-tipping occurs on unregistered land: land where there is an owner but there is no registration of them. Local authorities have a responsibility to clear waste from council properties or what are called ‘adopted highways’ – privately owned roads which are dedicated to public use. Thus, such sites are often left whilst the local authority tries to identify the owner, causing tension with local communities. Likewise, issues occur with land where the landowner is known but they will not do anything about fly-tipping which occurs on it. As participant Ella notes, this can cause a lot of ‘political pressure’ because people ‘don’t recognise the difference between public and private land’.

As this section has illuminated, ambiguities around fly-tipping extend much further than how to define it, affecting both how it is measured and who is responsible for dealing with it. A focus on the ‘who, what, where’ of fly-tipping illuminates ‘gaps’ in waste infrastructure from the subjective decisions of different local authority teams dealing with and reporting fly-tipping, to systems which cannot easily separate out and measure different waste events, to a lack of resources both with regard to dealing with fly-tipping and finding those responsible. Pressures from outside sources, such as wider waste targets or local communities unhappy with how fly-tipping is dealt with, add further tensions. Fly-tipping as an ‘abandoned’ form of waste is further cemented; the subjectivities regarding its measurement and treatment illuminating fractures in formal waste infrastructure and its inability to deal with abandoned materials.

Socio-economic factors and the built environment: The inequalities of abandonment

The above has considered the ‘who, what and the where’, alongside the difficulties in measuring and assigning responsibility. In this final section we add to the above by considering ‘the why’ with regard to fly-tipping and what this means for a focus on material abandonment. We continue our focus on household fly-tipping to consider some of the economic and social factors which have emerged from our data, alongside considering the relevance of the built environment. In particular, we illuminate the interconnections between inequalities and waste’s abandonment.

Most of our participants felt fly-tipping was economically motivated. Be it ‘a business which doesn’t wish to set up a trade waste contract for themselves at a tip’ or ‘a household which doesn’t want to pay for bulky collection’ (Participant George), fly-tipping is often referred to as a means of avoiding paying for waste to be appropriately disposed of (Hodsman & Williams, 2011). With regard to households, many participants expressed opinions that fly-tipping occurred because people are lazy and uninterested in ‘doing the right thing’, particularly when there is a cost associated to it. This tendency to lead with a focus on ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ behaviour highlights the influence of behaviour change approaches within local authority policies, but also reflects the potential bias of our sample mainly being formed of waste professionals.

However, when this was unpacked there was also recognition within our interviews of the impact of social deprivation:

You can see when you look at the different areas that there is a big disparity between the richer end. A lot of this is linked to cash, and the poorer side and deprivation that comes with that. That flows into all different facets in people’s lives to do with health and outcomes and stuff. Waste is a symptom of that. (Matt, Waste and Recycling Team)

So you’ll probably find there’s going to be a crossover between the poverty, the waste management issues, the policies in terms of the scale of bins that you’ve got and the collections. (Lewis, Neighbourhood Team)

Nearly all the participants were keen to point out that the worst areas in their boroughs for fly-tipping were those which were most deprived. Households which may not have the means to pay for bulky waste disposal or additionally may not have access to transport to move excess waste to local recycling facilities, therefore resulting in more pressure to fly-tip.

Pushing at this further, other social factors contributing to fly-tipping also came out tangentially in the interviews. Alongside housing type (which we move onto shortly), housing tenure and transitory populations were also seen as key interconnected issues:

. . . we do have issues where it might be a private rented property, it might be that the residents are often refugees or asylum seekers and they don’t maybe understand how to deal with their waste and will just literally pile up the waste in the back garden. (George, Environmental Action Unit Manager)

. . . those were 3 of our more deprived areas where things like transience are more of an issue, there are more complex lifestyles, denser housing stock, probably areas that are in high demand for other council services and agencies, anecdotally they are all the same sort of areas. (Harold, Environmental Action Unit Manager)

A lot of properties, terraced houses, are rented, and it’s not always a legitimate landlord. There’s an awful lot that have probably been sublet. When they sublet the property might not have correct bins. [. . .] We have a lot of areas with transient populations, so 3–6-month rentals, they’ll be owing money on the rental. (Peter, Environmental Manager Street Cleansing Service)

These quotes raise several social issues as contributing to increased fly-tipping. According to our participants, housing which is rented, perhaps illegally sublet, to transient populations, such as refugees, asylum seekers or students, is more likely to engage in fly-tipping behaviours. Whilst this seems a somewhat stereotypical assumption, the quotes point to multiple reasons for such households engaging in fly-tipping. A lack of appropriate guidance and communications is one reason. As participant George discusses, such households may not understand how to deal with their waste, having not been given the correct information by their landlord or being unaware of where to find it from the local authority. Language barriers may exacerbate this (Oluwadipe et al., 2022). Participant Daisy (Neighbourhood Compliance Team) similarly raises the issue of digital inequality and many people not having access to the internet and ‘just not knowing they can go on the website and find out what’s available’. As the first author has discussed elsewhere, given the complexity and variety of local authority household waste regimes, a lack of correct, accessible and inclusive information is likely to result in fly-tipping practices (Holmes et al., 2023). ‘Complex lifestyles’ is put forward as another reason, including those who, for whatever reason, are accessing multiple council services and agencies. This tallies with other research which emphasises that if households are facing multiple social and economic pressures waste management is not a high priority and fly-tipping or side waste may be more likely to occur (Oluwadipe et al., 2022).

The transient aspect is a further important factor. If people are only staying temporarily in an area, be that to attend university or whilst they await more permanent accommodation, this can have a significant impact on their ability to engage in waste management regimes. As Timlett and Williams (2009, p. 503) found in their study on student engagement with recycling in Portsmouth, ‘the longer a household resides at one address, the more likely they are to participate in kerbside recycling’. Short-term residencies and high turnovers of tenants do not encourage engagement with local authority waste management rules, which, as discussed, can be difficult enough to navigate by more permanent and established residents (Holmes et al., 2023). Without engagement with, and understanding of, local rules, fly-tipping is more likely to occur. Yet, as participants Gerald and Baraah from a Neighbourhood Team discuss, they might engage local residents and fly-tipping decreases, but ‘then they are moving on six months later. So you start in the whole process again.’ Connecting this back to our over-arching argument, the notion of transience is key to understanding how fly-tipping is a disruptive practice and fly-tipped waste is positioned as ownerless and uncategorised. Due to a variety of limitations and factors some transient populations can only engage in waste management in limited and piecemeal ways resulting in improper recycling and household fly-tipping. Such waste occurs in ‘ownerless’ transient spaces, places where people pass through, and may be less likely to establish ties or bonds to communities, neighbours, places or homes (May et al., 2022). Thus, whilst fly-tipping may be described as a deviant selfish practice, the above demonstrates that the act of abandoning waste cannot always be considered as one of just carelessness. Rather household fly-tipping is interwoven with a complex mesh of social factors and perpetuated by very stark inequalities – all of which can lead to issues engaging with often overly complicated local waste rules. As other work on household disposal has demonstrated, waste disposal is fraught with complexity (Evans, 2012; Gregson, 2011; Holmes, 2023). To assume that people fly-tip because they are purposefully subverting the law overlooks myriad factors which influence such abandonment.

These factors are further illuminated when we consider the effect of the built environment. Terraced housing and denser housing stock were mentioned by several participants as playing a role in fly-tipping.

Because we’ve got a lot of terraced properties and we’ve got a lot of quite tight areas, community areas [. . .] if they’ve got more rubbish than they can fit in their bins, obviously this kind of comes out as either side waste or fly-tipping. (Ella, Fleet Services Manager)

We seem to get it a lot when it’s terraces because they’ve got no front gardens, very tiny rear yards, nowhere to store anything. . . (Susan, Enforcement and Compliance Officer)

There used to be a bin wagon going down the back alley, people kept it clear. When the bin wagon stopped going down there you’ve got to take your bin to the end of your alleyway, people sometimes just can’t be bothered to do that, so you leave it out. (Peter, Environmental Manager Street Cleansing Service)

As these quotes demonstrate, high density housing results in internal and external issues which make the storage and management of waste difficult. From having more rubbish than can be fitted in the bin, with potentially nowhere to store it inside or outside, to tight communal bin areas making waste management difficult, to having to move bins some distance to be able to access kerbside collections – are all issues with the built environment which complicate waste and disposal practices and may exacerbate fly-tipping. Like the social factors listed above, the built environment becomes a further complexity in navigating waste regimes and policies.

The latter quote from Peter regarding changes to waste management practices adds a further dimension to the built environment: the influence of historical practice. As Peter’s quote suggests, households found waste management easier when the bin collection vehicle went down the back alley to collect their waste. Since this practice has changed – probably due to budget cuts, health and safety issues or in some cases the larger size of contemporary bin vehicles – households are less likely to engage in ‘correct’ waste management and more likely to undertake fly-tipping. This historical, habitual element extends further though to include what several participants refer to as fly-tipping ‘hotspots’. These are particular known places within certain areas where it is deemed acceptable to fly-tip. Part of the issue with these spaces is that they also become known hotspots for local authorities who are then on-hand to clear them up:

The problem is now that we’ve created this expectation that we will do this all of the time. (Peter, Environmental Manager Street Cleansing Service)

The difficulty as a council is that you want people to stop dumping rubbish, but we will clear away the rubbish if people dump it. (Baraah, Neighbourhood Team)

In a strange way these quotes illustrate an efficient informal waste management system. As both Baraah and Peter discuss, this creates expectations and cycles of fly-tipping practices. The continued illegal dumping in particular spaces followed by continual local authority clean ups create accepted fly-tipping zones: spatially and temporally reproducing fly-tipping practices and, in keeping with the previous section, blurring responsibilities. This supports the notion of the ‘broken window’ theory (Webb et al., 2006), that spaces in disrepair encourage other forms of anti-social behaviour. As Peter suggests, it creates an expectation that waste will be cleared up. Yet, given the multiple social factors which influence fly-tipping, an alternative reading of this suggests that rather than seeing fly-tipping ‘hotspots’ as further evidence of deviant selfish practice, they can also be indicative of the multiple inequalities some households face due to lack of money, mobility, digital access and so forth – whereby placing waste in known spaces of abandonment is seen as the only option. The contemporary monochrome ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ behavioural change approach to waste management potentially misses not just the nuance and context of households’ individual circumstances (Evans et al., 2013) but also how household disposal can be a source of anxiety (Holmes, 2023).

Interestingly, in areas where residential groups have collectively worked together to clean up community areas, such as back alleys, and make them into pleasant residential spaces, fly-tipping can become less of a problem (MacGregor, 2021). As several of our participants discussed, the influence of local residents is vital in preventing fly-tipping. As Ben (Waste and Recycling Team) notes, we have residents ‘out there every day looking at what is going on, challenging new tenants, knocking on the doors, telling them what they should do’. This would suggest that deterring fly-tipping is more than just cleaning up an area, but instead involves collective investment by local residents, engaging with neighbours and offering advice and guidance to create shared spaces for all to enjoy.

Concluding discussion

This article makes an original contribution to sociological literature by drawing on the under-researched example of fly-tipping to demonstrate the need for further study on material abandonment and its relevance for studies of consumption and disposal, and more broadly issues of sustainability. By illuminating the complexities of trying to define, measure and assign responsibility for fly-tipping, alongside insight into inequalities driven by socio-economic factors and the influence of the built environment, we have positioned fly-tipping as a disruptive form of waste caught between the site of its production and its acceptance into formal waste processing infrastructures. Concentrating on the ‘who, what, where’ and eventually the ‘why’ of fly-tipping practices, our work with local authority waste professionals demonstrates the complexities of managing fly-tipping, from subjectivities in defining ‘side waste’ from other forms of fly-tipping, to difficulties in reporting and measuring fly-tipped events, to pressures regarding responsibilities and who should deal with it – all of which highlights the blurred ownership of fly-tipped waste, the physical and metaphorical transitory spaces it resides in, and the gaps and tensions in waste infrastructure it reveals. This has also illuminated tensions with local residents, contestations over public/private distinctions, and the difficulties and moralities of enforcement. Significantly, we have also illustrated some of the complex social contexts in which fly-tipping occurs, many of which centre upon socio-economic inequalities, including deprivation, transitory populations, access to waste infrastructure, and overly complicated waste regimes. Finally, we have evaluated the impact of the built environment, how high-density housing can make waste management difficult, alongside the influence of historical fly-tipping ‘hotspots’. As we have argued, whilst clear definitions, measurements and responsibilities are needed to deal with fly-tipping, so is a better understanding of the social factors which lead to it, and particularly the impact of inequalities. The behavioural change approach which underpins contemporary waste policy, and is so ingrained in local authority rhetoric, defines behaviour as either ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. Yet, our research indicates that whilst there will be people and businesses who abandon waste, fly-tipping can be a result of much wider systematic issues. Without taking these into account and understanding the nuance and diversity of people’s lives and experiences, fly-tipping will continue. Future policy, particularly waste policy, must include the voices of those it impacts upon if problems such as fly-tipping are to be tackled.

The heart of our focus has been to open up the abandonment of objects and things, through activities such as fly-tipping or littering, to sociological analysis. As we have illustrated, abandonment is a further piece of the consumption and disposal jigsaw which work so far has not fully addressed. Returning to Evans’s (2019) 3Ds of consumption – devaluation, divestment and disposal – fly-tipping is beyond what we would normally consider to be the act of ‘disposal’ into a ‘moment’ of abandonment (Holmes, 2023). It illuminates a non-linear pathway of consumption caught between the site of its production (household/commercial) and its acceptance into formal waste management systems (local authority). The very nature of abandonment affords an opportunity to push at sociological studies of consumption and disposal to consider the potential for disposal to be disruptive, transitory and ownerless – thus moving away from consumption and disposal as practices which are easily defined by and assigned to the people which undertake them and the sites they occur in. Abandonment is a sociology of nothing (Scott, 2019) – ambiguous, unassigned and seemingly unowned. Yet, as we have illustrated, there is also a relational element to abandonment worthy of further study. In this article we touch on the relationality of fly-tipping, briefly highlighting how whilst abandonment signals a lack of relationality to the discarded waste and conjures an act of finality and disregard, our work has illuminated the multifaceted reasons for engaging in fly-tipping. As we have shown, for households facing multiple inequalities, fly-tipping may be an act of confusion, misunderstanding or feeling there is no other choice but that does not always equate with a blatant disregard for what happens to their waste. This builds on emerging work on the materiality of nothing (Holmes, 2023) which explores the relational potency of objects and materials which are no longer in one’s possession. Drawing on Hetherington’s (2004) absent presence there is scope for further studies of object and material abandonment to investigate the relational capacities of abandoned things. This would develop sociological studies of consumption and disposal in a novel direction.