French mayor goes through dumped rubbish to trace owner - and returns it to them
The waste held clues to its original owner
An estimated 80,000 tonnes of rubbish is illegally dumped in the French countryside every year, prompting mayors to take decisive action
Ivan Westbrook/Shutterstock
A mayor in northern France has become the latest to return illegally dumped rubbish to its owner, along with a €385 fine.
Christophe Dietrich, mayor of Laigneville in the department of Oise (Hauts-de-France), posted a video showing how he had tracked down the owners of an illegally dumped pile of waste, as a way to show how he is tackling the problem of fly-tipping and excess waste disposal more widely.
The unwitting dumpee not only got their rubbish back, but also “a fine of €135 and a contribution towards collection costs of €250. In total, he will have to pay €385 to the municipality”, said Mr Dietrich.
“I asked technical services to go and collect the rubbish, but that wasn't all they did. They dutifully searched everything on the ground and found a number of clues that enabled the municipal police to trace the perpetrator of this illegal dumping.”
The owner of the rubbish was required to go back to pick up their waste, the mayor said, before being issued with the fines.
Return to sender
This is not the first time that Mr Dietrich has taken this approach: in 2020 he collected and re-dumped 10 tonnes of rubbish back to its owner, who was later fined €4,000.
Read also: French mayor ‘returns’ 10 tonnes of illegal waste
And Mr Dietrich is not the only mayor to employ this method to ‘name and shame’ people who illegally dump waste.
In 2022, another mayor (this time in Loiret) returned 12 black bin bags to their owner - who lived in a neighbouring commune - after they had been illegally dumped. The mayor discovered the perpetrator by going through the rubbish to find their name and address.
In 2019, a Côtes-d'Armor mayor employed a similar method for waste that had been dumped in the town centre soon after Christmas, and said that a name and address was clearly displayed among the rubbish.
“Over this holiday season, I suppose that these boxes, wrapping paper and leftover food fell off Father Christmas’ sleigh when he was leaving your house. To help repair his error, I thought it would be useful to return them to you,” he wrote.
Read more: French mayor collects fly-tipped waste and dumps it at culprits’ house
Read also: French mayor returns Christmas rubbish to owners
In 2018, Denis Rapinel, mayor of Ille-et-Vilaine, returned a huge pile of household waste - including cardboard boxes, an old office chair, some non-biodegradable plastic bags, and what appeared to be a broken microwave - to a local resident after finding it dumped in the countryside.
He also posted the evidence to his Facebook page to publicly show his actions.
Illegal fly-tipping and wild waste dumping in nature is an ongoing problem all over France, with an estimated 80,000 tonnes of rubbish dumped in the countryside every year.
