Parts of Nottinghamshire are being blighted by fly-tippers abandoning ‘fridge carcasses’ in lay-byes and country roads.
The amount of appliances stripped of metal and left dumped doubled in the Mansfield area in the space of year.
Mansfield District Council believes that changes in the rules on disposing of fridges has led to some scrapyards refusing to take them.
Officials say this has led to more dodgy scrap men stripping them of metal and them fly-tipping them.
The authority is even looking into using covert cameras to crackdown on the incidents, which it calls ‘fridge carcasses’ as its also seen a general rise in the amount of illegal waste.
It comes after Rushcliffe Borough Council reported an 80 per cent rise in the amount of fly tipping in its area in the past year.
This is a problem council taxpayers pay for
Councillor Mick Barton, Mansfield’s portfolio holder for public protection, said: “People should not leave items on the roadside to be collected by scrap metal collectors as those items – particularly fridges – could be stripped of valuable parts and then be illegally dumped.
“Householders should make sure that anyone they hire to remove waste is reputable and registered to do so.
“This is a problem that council taxpayers ultimately end up having to pay for, so it’s in everyone’s interest to help reduce the problem and the bill it creates.”
Between April 2015 and March 2016, Mansfield District Council dealt with 1,335 incidents of fly-tipping at a cost of £64,338. Thirty one of these incidents involved fridges.
This is compared with 1,059 fly-tipping incidents at a cost of £48,956 between April 2014 and March 2015, with 16 abandoned fridge incidents.
And in 2015-2016 only eight people were successfully prosecuted in court by the council for fly-tipping, with 54 paying an out-of-court settlements.
