‘Selfish’ Fifers dump items outside closed recycling centres

‘Selfish’ Fifers who dumped waste outside the gates of a closed recycling centre have been criticised.

The recycling centres in Cupar and Pittenweem were closed on Saturday, because of staff shortages.

Councillor Ross Vettraino, convenor of the Environment and Protective Services Committee, said there was a 40 per cent absenteeism rate among the Fife Council staff who work in waste collection, waste disposal and maintain the recycling centres.

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He said it was ‘inevitable’ that some services would have to be discontinued or limited because of the shortages, and criticised people who dumped items outside the centres on Saturday.

“Given the circumstances across the world, it must have been obvious to those who visited both those sites seeking to dispose of waste that closing the closures without notice must have had something to do with the Coronavirus epidemic and that those staff who were able to attend work, would have had much more work to do than normal,” Cllr Vettraino said.

Notwithstanding, some of them decided to give the staff even more work to do and illegally dumped the waste at the gates of both sites.

“In these times when so many people are making huge efforts to do what they can to minimise any disruption, it beggars belief that some people can be so uncaring.

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“They are sad example of selfishness and environmental vandalism.

“They don’t care what difficulties public service employees may be encountering as they strive to maintain public services in the face of heavy odds, so they gave them unnecessarily even more work to do.

“These are probably the same people who contaminate their landfill bins at their homes and otherwise fail to use the council’s recycling services properly and, as a consequence, cost the council taxpayers in Fife millions of pounds every year.

“We are in difficult times, which will become even more difficult. Everyone must do what they can to help the society, of which they are part, to navigate the difficulties successfully and engaging in inconsiderate and illegal dumping isn’t how to do it.”