Huge cost of fly-tipping revealed City spent £600,000 last year clearing up dumped fridges and waste

ALMOST nine fridges are being dumped in Birmingham every day as it is hit by a surge of fly-tipping.

Figures have revealed a huge rise in the problem – with numbers of abandoned appliances soaring.

The council’s bill for clearing up all fly-tipping was £600,000 during 2016.

In 2014, 2,052 fridges were found dumped on road sides, back garages and alleyways. But last year the number had risen to 3,150. The numbers peaked in August 2016 when 348 were found in a month.

There are few signs of improvement this year as last month 110 fridges were dumped in a single weekend in Ithon Grove, Kings Norton.

A changes in recycling regulations in 2013 and 2014 has seen the cost of recycling fridges and freezers rise and scrap dealers will no longer take them, or they will strip out valuable parts before dumping the cabinet.

Some have also blamed the cutting of free bulky waste collections from households.

Now Labour council bins boss Lisa Trickett is urging residents not to leave fridges by the roadside for scrap collectors and to instead take them to the tip for free or use a reputable recycling firm.

Cllr Tricket (Lab, Moseley and Kings Heath) said: “The increase in the number of reported fly-tipping incidents containing white goods since January 2014 is perhaps due to the changes in 2013 to the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Regulations.

“Manufacturers, producers and larger retailers now have to pay the cost of recycling and recovery after items have been received by an authorised waste facility and this is further compounded by changes to the Environment Agen- cy’s hazardous waste guidance 2014.

The resulting effect is that most of the country’s scrap metal dealers no longer accept fridges and fridge freezers and this has given rise, across the region, to the increase.”

She said that the council is only responsible for clearing waste from public land and has agreements between its waste collection department and highways contractor Amey to deal with fly-tipping.”

According to latest figures, there were more than 12,000 incidents of in