The practice of illegal dumping has a serious impact on the environment through contamination of land and pollution of water bodies. This can subsequently impact negatively on people’s health. Cleaning of illegal dumping is costly and counter-productive, as it dilutes the available funding and resources for waste management and other much needed municipal services. Although it has the potential, legislation plus an enabling environment in and of itself does not prevent illegal dumping practices. As responsible stewards of our environment we all need to maintain vigilance over the same and report them to the proper municipal authorities. It begs the question: Is it time to establish a very public shaming list of corporations and their CEOs? In our ‘Top Story’ this month you can see the impact one private citizen had when such illegal waste dumping was reported. An investigation followed and the responsible company plus CEO were each fined.
– Lisa James.