Fly-tipping and the sociology of abandonment

This article addresses a prominent gap in sociological studies of consumption and disposal. Whilst waste and disposal studies have traditionally focused on the production of waste or its subsequent treatment at municipal disposal facilities, little has focused sociologically on waste outside of these confines, such as littering and fly-tipping. Focusing on the latter, this article makes an original contribution by drawing on fly-tipping to demonstrate the need for further sociological study on material abandonment and its relevance for the fields of consumption and disposal, and more broadly issues of sustainability. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 14 local authority waste officers and local councillors, we argue that fly-tipping disrupts the usual linear pathways of consumption, occurring in transitional zones between the site of production/ownership of objects/materials (e.g. households, construction sites) and that of its acceptance and treatment into formal waste infrastructures (local authority waste processing). We illustrate how fly-tipping incorporates both aspects of disjuncture and abandonment but that it cannot simply be positioned as an act without care. We do this through a focus on three interconnected key facets of fly-tipping: (1) the complexity of defining; (2) issues of measurement and responsibility; and (3) socio-economic factors and the influence of the built environment.