Higher numbers of fly-tipping may be partly due to tyres no longer being accepted at landfill and the cost of tyre disposal has roughly doubled since 2006.
This is likely to be an underestimate because of low reporting levels and issues with recording. The UK produces 55 million waste tyres every year, 15,000 of these are dumped illegally according to official statistics from 2020/21 (Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra), 2023). Tyres are expensive to dispose of and often form a significant portion of all waste that is dumped. It is unsightly, sometimes dangerous and costly to clear up. Fly-tipping is a major problem for both rural and urban communities.
