holiday venue burying rubbish- wwyd?

[Stovetopespresso]

hi there I'm on holiday in cornwall and the campsite hotel place seems nice, it's our second time here. we are in a lodge and were surprised there was nowhere to put cans or glass, plastic etc apart from one "normal" bin
but when dh and I went for a wander a couple of days ago we saw a smouldering fire and a whole load of cans and bottles dumped next to it. dh thinks they're going to bury it. is this legal?should I ask the owners?

Or have they divided the rubbish that will burn and the rubbish that won’t?
Cans/glass etc. gets recycled and everything else is burnt?

@TheSunShinesBrighter not sure! they've put some barriers up to stop kids running about there, with a sign saying construction site, and got a digger out. kids were running about near the fire a couple of days ago. surely it's not legal, I don't know, maybe someone on here will, it could be all above board, just weird there's no chance to recycle anything as a guest in self catering, then finding this. there's another way to the area in question, I took a photo.

It does look a bit odd but maybe it is all shovelled up and taken elsewhere for recycling.
Does the area look like a landfill?

not really, but I'm beginning to suspect the whole of the field next to it is on top of a myriad of unspeakable stuff! I'm on pretty good terms with one of the owners family, I could ask her, just wondering how not to offend, I know they have struggled this past year. otoh we paid for this and presumed a certain level of services eg waste disposal. I could drive it to the recycling centre myself I guess.

That's almost certainly not legal. If they're running a business, they will be required to dispose of all waste to licenced waste facilities and it will be in their interest to sort it appropriately as it will cost more to dispose of unsorted waste or whatever ends up in landfill/incinerated.

The council or Environment Agency will probably be interested in what they're up to.

so, back to my dilemma, do I

• tell on them and feel like a cow, - have a quiet chat with the woman I know to give them a chance to sort this going forward, or
• do nothing (I will still drive my stuff to the recycling place some 7 miles away which seems silly and annoying to have to do on holiday) .

I might enquire innocently where I can recycle my rubbish as a forst start.

it's so weird that the pile of rubbish is cans, glass etc, like someone has actually sorted it in to recyclables ♻️ but someone else has just dumped it there and got out the digger

Please do let the EA know. If they are dumping/burying it, they will be acting illegally

There's a whole host of reasons:

Danger to children - a few signs/but of fence won't keep them out

Danger to wildlife from the stuff dumped

Danger to the environment - landfills have to be carefully monitored to make sure nothing leeches into the water system, causes long term damage to the ground etc.

Are you sure this is the hotel's doing and not external fly tippers?

If they're already running a hotel, rather than some pop up farm campsite to take advantage of this year's boom in UK holidays, you'd have thought their waste provision would be well established.

I'd report it.
It would bother me that something dodgy is going on.
In 2021 you'd think this sort of environmental damage would be behind us.

I would report it TBH. I don’t understand how it is a dilemma and why you would feel like a cow, if they are polluting while pocketing the money paid by guests for waste disposal it is shameful.

That looks like they are burning ragwort to me. Which is what should be done with the vile stuff.

@LovelyLovelyWarmCoffee

I would report it TBH. I don’t understand how it is a dilemma and why you would feel like a cow, if they are polluting while pocketing the money paid by guests for waste disposal it is shameful.

Agree

@Toomuchspinning possibly burning ragwort, I don't know, more worried about the heap of stuff next to it.
@BarbaraofSeville no way it could be flytippers, unless campers? I've texted the person I know here and asked innocently what to do with our recycling, we will see what she says.

I'd feel bad reporting it over their heads and want to give them a chance

Please report this, the contact details are below.

I live in Cornwall and locally what has happened is that most of the large recycling bins that were accessible to the public eg in car parks etc have been removed. Which is fine if you are a private household as you can recycle at the kerbside at our fortnightly collection (yes, recycling here is still collected fortnightly and is a pain to store!) but it meant that many small businesses who found business recycling and waste costs prohibitive now have nowhere to recycle and are having to find more imaginative solutions to the problems of getting rid of their rubbish.

As an example, one seaside cafe I worked at were charged something like £5 per bin bag to have them collected (rolls of bin bags provided by the waste company beforehand so all have to be paid for in advance and heaven help you if you didn't fill it to the brim or one got torn and became unusable!) and the glass recycling was done by the owners on their way home every evening, dropped into the public car park recycling bin. Any other waste was absorbed into their own household collection. They definitely weren't the only business to do this, and goodness knows what they have arranged now.

I'm not saying that what has happened in the photo you have provided is dodgy but if everything is as it should be then no harm done reporting it via the link anyway?

www.cornwall.gov.uk/environment/environmental-protection/environmental-crime/

@IWantAllTheDogsInTheWorld great name! thanks, that's really helpful. it must be hard for cornwall hosting seemingly 50% of the entire holidaying population of Britain this year, but they should still sort the basics like this out imo. I'll wait till tomorrow and see what they say, it's going to be really obvious who has reported them if I have to go down that route (I am such a coward).