THE menace of fly-tipping is all the more galling in an area like the Highlands of Scotland, reputed across the globe for its mighty swathes of beautiful, open land.
It’s that very geography, coupled with the fact that so much of the area is still very sparsely populated, which makes this offence alarmingly easy to perpetrate here.
The incident on which we report this week is particularly shocking — it really is one of those cases where a picture is worth a thousand words. It was brought to our attention by members of the public rightly horrified and disgusted by the turn of events.
Whoever is ultimately responsible for literally dumping bulky, potentially dangerous items, including commercial-sized refrigeration units, in such a beautiful area deserves to have the book thrown at them, and to be named and shamed.
The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (SEPA), reckons that Scottish local authorities spend in excess of £2.5 million each year clearing up instances of illegally dumped waste, not to mention the costs incurred by private land owners.
While the majority of Highland householders and responsible businesses are doing their bit to push up the recycling rate and reduce what’s going to landfill, a loathsome, lazy minority continue to behave as though they are above the law.
