— By Andru Shively — 

Like any commodity, waste, too, must be cultivated before it can be exported, as farmers in England are finding out.

At the end of January, three men were arrested near the city of Peterborough in connection with organised waste dumping happening on a wide scale across multiple counties, including Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire.

According to Defra and the Environment Agency, plastic-wrapped bales of waste are being duplicitously deposited in agricultural fields and other rural sites, disguised as normal farming bales. Landowners duped into storing these bales ultimately pay high removal costs once the waste is revealed.

The authorities have appealed to the public to report any bales seen in suspicious places. Yet while we think finding a proverbial needle in one of these waste-filled haystacks might be less challenging than usual, locating the bales in the first place is another thing altogether.