Putting unwanted items outside your home for recycling could be fly-tipping!

I've just spotted a story in The Times newspaper about a woman who was given a £500 fly-tipping fine after leaving an item of furniture outside her home for someone else to reuse. Sidebar: this is an overzealous council trying to raise money illegally in my view. Many councils in the UK are broke because of poor financial management and reduced government funding.

Isabelle Pepin was issued with the fine by Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council in the UK. She put an IKEA cabinet outside her home with a note telling passers-by that it was free if they wanted it. This is very common in the UK.

Where I live a lot of people do it and quite often the item is picked up by somebody because they have a use for it. It is a very effective way in fact of recycling unwanted items with little effort.

In this story, the IKEA cabinet was left on her road for a few hours and was untaken and moved back onto her property. Three weeks later an enforcement officer visited her and told her that she would have to pay a £500 fine for fly tipping. The officer said that it would be doubled to £1000 if it went unpaid.

She is adamant that it is not fly tipping. It's just recycling. Isabelle said: "It's not fly-tipping, that is not what is happening here. It's recycling things people no longer want or need. The guy from the council initially came when I was away and spoke with my housemate about the cabinet that was left outside for a few hours. My housemate just laughed because he thought it was nothing serious and brought it back onto the driveway."

Isabelle said that the official was quite intimidating. One councillor thought that the fine was excessive. And said that it was difficult to see that it was fly tipping. Another official from the council said that the council is committed to tackling fly tipping and has contracted with Waste Investigation Support and Enforcement to investigate offences and administer penalty notices as appropriate."

Well, this is a first for me. I think it's ridiculous. It clearly isn't fly tipping. It is a standard way to recycle unwanted goods in this council have behaved irresponsibly and I would argue stupidly. I wish Isabelle well and I hope that she can resolve the matter.

It seems the contractor is to blame. They should own up and the fine rescinded.

----------

P.S. please forgive the occasional typo. These articles are written at breakneck speed using Dragon Dictate. I have to prepare them in around 20 mins. Also: sources for news articles are carefully selected but the news is often not independently verified. Also, I rely on scientific studies but they are not 100% reliable.