Ah The truck driver is on his deathbed. he wheezes he coughs He then tapes the story of his illegal dumping of one million tons of waste near Derry in Northern Ireland, his one of the worst environmental crimes in British history.
This is the starting point for the BBC’s new podcast, Buried. This podcast looks at how the UK’s waste industry falls victim to a widespread criminal enterprise.
“We were completely dumbfounded by it,” says Dan Ashby, one half of the husband and wife production team behind the show. Exciting TV drama. “This was a terrifying symbol of what was happening to our waste across the UK and how organized crime was involved.”
The burial began in Northern Ireland, searching for clues from deathbed tapes in an attempt to discover how about 20 Titanic’s weight of waste was secretly and illegally dumped at the Mobui Road site. As Ashby and Lucy Taylor roamed the closed landfill, local fisherman and campaigner Dean Blackwood said, “Welcome to Mobui, the scene of horror.”
Ashby describes the 46-hectare site (believed to be one of Europe’s largest illegal waste dumps) as apocalyptic and eerie. “The waste is no longer piled up. It’s all underground,” he says. “But the fact that you can’t see it makes it all the more sinister.”
He remembers seeing a pool that “foamed a terrible silver” and “looked toxic and otherworldly.” For years, criminals have posed as legitimate businesses and scammed councils across Northern Ireland into paying them to illegally dump their families’ recycling on the Site, a special area of protection. The impact on drinking water and nearby rivers worries communities, while local vets are reporting a sharp increase in cattle getting sick and dying in the area.
“The toxins are in the groundwater, and they’re running into rivers,” says Ashby. “Even the former environment minister says it’s a time bomb, a crisis that could turn into a catastrophe.” Financially, it’s already a disaster. Cleaning up the site, which contained everything from asbestos to arsenic, will cost an estimated £100 million.
Shockingly, local officials may have been completely unaware of Mobui’s illegality. Halfway through the series, Ashby and Taylor discover a summary of the Ombudsman’s report on government failures on crime. This found in 2000 that those in power noticed the dump being illegally expanded and did nothing to prevent it. A lost internal note is then discovered. It’s a briefing from officials to top civil servants.
“We may have broken the law here in the handling of this horrific crime,” Ashby said of the memo claiming that the Northern Ireland Infrastructure Authority did not keep records. The agency has also focused on enhancing environmental checks, and struggles to highlight that final enforcement actions helped shut down the site.
“That department may be breaking the law. That memo didn’t appear in the Freedom of Information Act release, but probably should have. That they failed in a really bad way.” There is evidence, campaigners say this is important because they have been repeatedly denied a public inquiry, and they have accused the Northern Ireland government of a cover-up. This is the first time the claim has been made.”
But Mobui is just the beginning. “It’s not just there, it’s everywhere,” says Taylor. “There is a large amount of illegal dumping across the UK.” From low-level criminals taking waste cheaply and dumping it on illegal sites, there is a growing trend of breaking into legal waste disposal companies and signing contracts. From acquired organized criminal activity, the result can be outright criminal activity. middle.
“Congress needs to address waste, but it has more pressing issues,” Ashby said. “So often we don’t check enough what’s going on with the waste. Some are dumping on illegal sites, while others, like Mobuoy, have licensed operators dumping on legitimate sites more than they should. It’s easy to break.”
Ashby and Taylor are adept at uncovering such stories. In 2015 they quit his ITV job and bought a one-way ticket to Tanzania, where he worked as a freelancer, reporting on the ivory trade, dynamite blowing up coral reefs, fishing his gang, and trafficking rosewood. bottom. “After we saw it, we were environmentally conscious,” says Ashby. “Those stories felt untold, and that became our passion.” became too dangerous for them and had to leave in haste before heading to Moscow. Now settled in Sheffield, they focus on the criminal organization’s involvement in illegal waste.
The range of problems is very wide. In the series, the pair meet investigators who use algorithms and satellite imagery to locate illegal waste sites. They found him in the nearby Peak District as many as a dozen. So why is sourcing and illegally dumping waste such a popular option for criminals?
“Think about what you throw away,” says Ashby. “It’s a huge amount. That waste has to be dealt with, and someone has to pay someone to deal with it. The risk is low for the criminal, and the reward is paid for committing the crime.” This is a very nice business.”
This is the size of illegal dumping sites that generate billions of pounds for the industry. As of 2019, the National Crime Agency has identified 20 organized crime groups linked to waste crime in the UK, and the Environment Agency says that almost a fifth of UK waste is linked to criminals at some point in the chain. said to be processed by
“Imagine if one-fifth of the cafes you went to were run by the Mafia,” says Ashby. “Imagine the anger. But it’s a waste, so I close my eyes and throw it away.” The Environment Agency is stopping these activities as quickly as possible, but it is fighting a losing battle. From 2017 to 2018, he shut down more than 800 illegal waste dumps, but identified about 850 more.
The series takes the pair to Italy, where this level of organized crime has spawned its own coined term: the ecomafia. “We wanted to know what the worst-case scenario would be,” he says. “So we went to the suburbs of Naples to find out how bad it would be and the answer was ‘really bad’. Much of the illegal dumping was set on fire and the area became known as Fire Nation. These fires are highly toxic and the claims that they cause cancer are being investigated. Cancer rates especially in children are very high. It can have very scary and dystopian consequences. “
“We spoke with fearless campaigners,” adds Taylor. “Priest under armed guard for speaking out against mafia – someone left bomb outside his church. Correlation between human health and illegal dumping” There are truly incredible people fighting for this as evidence mounts.”
Ashby fears Britain will follow suit. “What happened in Italy could happen here,” he says. “There is British exceptionalism that thinks it’s an Italian problem, just a dangerous man in a van, but our series experts know that the British waste mafia is also trafficking. It’s starting to reveal: guns and drugs.”
Low-risk, high-reward crime generates huge amounts of money and power, and with it comes systemic corruption. “It’s easy money that allowed them to turn waste into gold,” says Ashby. “We don’t have a mafia-like history in the UK, but I fear that if this branch of organized crime becomes sufficiently funded and grows, our institutions will begin to rot further.”
Buried is essentially a true crime podcast, but following clues and hints from a deathbed recording, “we were so shocked we didn’t even know what to say,” which is why they It’s also a question we want our viewers to have. think deeply. “We want people to look at their trash cans in horror,” he says. “It’s like Narnia, dark and terrifying.”
