Shocked! We're really shocked!

Landfill tax is due to rise from next year until 2010 by £8 per year to encourage businesses to reduce and recycle waste. But experts believe that these measures will drive householders and business owners to give their waste to less reputable companies.

Prof Nick Tilley, a criminal sociologist at the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London who has studied illegal dumping, said: "The Government is in a bit of a fix as it wants to stop people dumping waste but also wants to deter people from producing more waste than is necessary. The more costly it becomes to dispose of waste material legally, the more tempting it will be to dispose of it illegally and the greater the potential there is for people to exploit that."

That much and more from The Sunday Telegraph today. And we needed a criminal sociologist to tell us that?

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