An Illegal Waste Tip In Hartlepool, UK
The war in Ukraine is still holding the headlines, at least in Europe, and rightly so, but there’s another, much bigger war being fought throughout the world. It’s a World War.
It’s the war to save the planet and those who inhabit it. It ‘s being fought by ordinary folk like you and me, against the might of huge corporations like the fossil fuel companies, the plastics industry, and almost every other organization that draws profit from wreaking havoc on our planet.
It’s not just the corporations. The Mafia and other large criminal gangs are cashing in on this giant wrecking ball pounding at the very heart of our planetary home.
Two articles in today’s Guardian highlight this.
“Buried” is a new BBC podcast investigating how criminal gangs are cashing in on the UK’s waste disposal industry and illegally dumping millions of tons of waste. In 2019, the National Crime Agency was aware of twenty organised crime groups linked to waste crime in the UK. At least one fifth of all waste in the UK passes through the hands of criminals at some point in the chain, according to the Environment Agency.
Mobouy Road, near Derry in Northern Ireland is one place where illegal waste the equivalent in weight to twenty Titanic ships has been dumped on a site which is in a special area of conservation. There are massive illegal dumps all over the UK. Satellite imaging can reveal them, ten or more in the Peak District National Park alone.
It’s an illegal billion dollar industry and not just in the UK. Criminal gangs operate world wide, doing deals with local authorities only to happy to have the weighty responsibility of waste disposal lifted from their shoulders, and happy to turn a blind eye to where it ends up.
Read more in today’s Guardian article HERE.
Highlighted again today in the Guardian was the sorry tale of the bio-bead, nurdle, and other similar tiny plastic beads that are being washed up on our beaches regularly. These beads are the basic building blocks of all plastic products and million of tons of them are shipped around the world every year. They are a lucrative off-shoot for the fossil fuel industry.
Unfortunately, they are not classified under the International Maritime Organization’s dangerous goods code for safe handling and storage. Hence billions of these toxic little beads are regularly lost overboard from ships, or in the case of bio-beads discharged from sewage treatment plants. Pollution of beaches is just one problem caused by this highly toxic waste, as highlighted by the Guardian’s article today on huge numbers of nurdles washed up on France’s Brittany beaches over the weekend.
Read more in today’s Guardian article HERE
And an earlier article from November 2021 HERE.
There’s a World War raging around the planet. On the one hand are the bad guys, on the other there’s us. In any war the object is to diminish the power of the opposing force, weaken them substantially.
It may seem an impossible task, a David versus Goliath situation. If the Ukrainians had viewed the might of Russia as an impossible fight, Vladimir Putin would be strutting around Kyiv right now, like the cock who had just shafted all the hens in the henhouse.
The Ukrainian people have proved that the true spirit and fortitude of the human species can be harnessed as a collective endeavour to fight evil. They are an example to the world in the fight to save their Homeland.
But there’s a bigger Homeland to which we all belong. Are we to settle for complacency and allow the powerful Goliaths to destroy it, just as Putin has tried to do in Ukraine?
If we do, if we allow these Goliaths to continue raping and pillaging the only Homeland we have, then we will all lose.