- There are two widescreen televisions on a shelf, eight
fridge-freezers, a strimmer and a vacuum cleaner. A set of Kirkintilloch
golf clubs, three mountain-bikes and a tank engine. "Everything for
Everybody Everywhere" is the motto here.
-
- The manager is dressed in Calvin Klein and DKNY, a gold
chain around his neck, a sparkler on his finger. Arms folded, he looks
every inch the patriarch as he stands and meets his customers from their
Volvos and BMWs. Only his black fingernails, vague whiff of carbolic and
Grim Reaper tattoos give any hint that he is no ordinary retailer.
-
- For this is not a department store. Nor even some groomed
car-boot sale. This is Britain's poshest rubbish dump. So posh, in fact,
that the binmen have set up their own shop. A queue stretches round the
block. The car-park is full. Ordinary rubbish, it ain't.
-
- A W-reg Ford Fiesta, a speedboat and a Second World War
bomb. Gemstones, Marks & Spencer suits, computers. There is very little,
it seems, that doesn't get dumped. Or sold. With a profit of close on £1,000
a month, the selling area at Westminster Road Household Recycling Centre
in Wareham, Dorset, is a commercial triumph.
-
- The proprietor is a millionaire, with a holiday home
in Cyprus and a top-of-the-line Range Rover. Manager Steve Webber has worked
here for five years. Before that he was a pig farmer, a shampoo-factory
worker and a marquee erector. He takes home just £220 a week but
insists: "This is my best job so far, no question."
-
- Overwhelmed by the quality of the garbage, he has just
bought a diamond tester for £150. "It never ceases to amaze
me now what people chuck," he says. "I've found eight diamond
rings that had been thrown away. So I got a tester and it was well worth
it. Four turned out to be real. I gave them to my wife Sandra. What else
could I do? It's finders keepers on a rubbish tip. And if people don't
want these things, I do.
-
- "It's fair enough. We get first choice. The rest,
we sell. But we keep the prices low, a couple of quid, and it goes straight
back into site management. It's more about landfill prevention. Anything
we can sell or take home, the council doesn't have to bury."
-
- And he does have a point. Dorset is Britain's greenest
county, recycling and composting 27 per cent of its rubbish, 14 points
higher than the national average. But they do throw out a lot - more than
half a ton per head each year. And 140,000 tons of it still goes to landfill.
As Andy Nelmes, from the Community Recycling Network, admits: "In
Europe, only Portugal and Greece are worse [than Britain]."
-
- And so Dorset County Council, which leases out the Wareham
site to Weymouth and Sherborne Recycling, believes this initiative is an
environmental boon. Gary Simpson, from waste management, says: "This
company is very entrepreneurial. And we encourage that. Anything that keeps
landfill down has to be a good thing."
-
- There have been sporadic complaints. "One chap came
in saying the selling area was an eyesore," says Steve. "But
this is a tip. Another claimed we should be paying extra tax. But it's
all above board. The boss isn't stupid." Evidently not. Company administrator
Ian Squires admits: "Yes, there is money to be made in this business."
As to the shop and his employees' perks, he says: "What's dumped is
dumped. As long as there are no health and safety issues, I don't see a
problem."
-
- Nor, surprisingly, does the local charity shop, the more
traditional venue for posh people's discards. Anita Maguiness, deputy manager
of Sue Ryder Care, says: "I suppose we could be losing out. But we're
not big enough to stock furniture and children's toys. And we are very
choosy about what we sell."
-
- But should we really be cheered by this Upstairs Downstairs
example? The poor living off not just the rich man's scraps but his dustbins
too. Steve, who has apparently learned more about human nature than any
barman, is remarkably sanguine. "It's a low-status job, working with
rubbish. But it's like being rich. After a while, you only go for brand
names. If it's not designer, I won't take it home. It's got to have a label.
Calvin Klein is a particular favourite."
-
- He wears a British army watch and what looks like a diamond
ring - "It's fake, actually. I only found out when I bought the tester,
but the wife's are real." The gold chain is nine carat. So too the
miniature gold football hanging from it. In his wardrobe at home there
are two pristine Marks & Spencer suits. All, naturally, come from the
tip.
-
- His house is a shrine to rubbish. Because of health-and-safety
legislation, Steve is not allowed to sell electrical goods. But those that
work are taken home. "I've furnished my entire home from other people's
rubbish. Apart from the carpets and beds, I haven't had to buy a thing.
Ornaments, garden furniture, plants, tables, chairs. I found a three-piece
suite last week, and that went home the same day. I looked in the catalogue
and it would have cost me £240. Our toaster, the sandwich maker,
a big fridge-freezer. I found our tumble-drier dumped, still in its box.
And we've got a lovely 32-inch Sanyo telly."
-
- Every day of the year, bar Christmas, Steve sorts through
the skips - from household waste to cardboard - looking for the unusual,
the valuable and the dangerous. "The strangest thing we found was
a World War II bomb, which hadn't exploded. We had to call in the disposal
squad. The other week, we had a speedboat. I don't sail so we sold that
for £100. One chap brought in a W-reg Ford Fiesta on Boxing Day.
He said: 'I've just bought the wife a new one, and we don't want this.'
It was taxed and had an MoT. So one of the lads took it home. That was
four years ago. It's still running."
-
- The site office is a treasure trove. A Packard Bell PC,
complete with Windows '98, a Bush television and video, kettle, Sharp tele-fax.
In a tin in the corner there is perhaps £100 worth of krona, lei,
roubles, Turkish lira. Out the back, by the loo block, are 10 bin-liners
stuffed with children's clothes. Steve has a delve and immediately pulls
out a brand new Kappa sweatsuit - "I'll have that for Jamie, my four-year-old"
- but a designer tartan shirt still with its label on gets thrown back,
earmarked for the shop. "I don't like check."
-
- Steve's family must be extraordinarily grateful to the
burghers of Wareham. His eldest son Marlon, 14, wears a Tag Heuer watch
and rides a £500 Daewoo mountain-bike. Sandra, 32, is very much the
Elizabeth Taylor of Ferndown. Does she mind wearing other people's cast-offs,
even if they are diamonds? He laughs. "She was a bit sniffy at first.
But she came round amazingly quickly."
-
- But can people really mean to throw away diamond rings
and perfectly decent fridges, computers and televisions? "I've got
my own theory about the fridges," says Steve. "Every summer,
it gets hot, and people forget to turn their fridge up, so they think it's
broken, throw it away, and buy a new one. They're daft. As for diamonds,
I don't know. But what else can we do? What could the police do?"
-
- He pulls open a drawer. There is yet another Tag Heuer
inside. "I found this the other day in household waste. It might be
fake but I don't think so. Nobody's come for it yet."
-
- So who are these louche regulars who throw out last year's
labels and swish jewellery? One family pulls up in an enormous Volvo, the
roof-rack groaning with goodies. Steve says nonchalantly, "That's
the third barbecue they've brought in this morning. We get all sorts. I
tend to know the buyers better than the dumpers. There's a good reputation
about the Wareham dump. People know you can get a cracking bargain here.
One couple comes down from Windsor three times a year. They're obviously
very well off, but they always go away with their boot bulging. Stuff for
the garden. Furniture, plants."
-
- The dump attracts 1,000 people a week, 800 at weekends
alone. Shirley is a 22-year-old single mother who lives on the nearby estate.
She comes every morning. Today she leaves with a £2 Cosatto pushchair.
It has been barely used. "I buy a little something most days,"
she says. "Stuff for the baby mostly. It's become almost a habit."
-
- A middle-aged man with shifty eyes and a gardener's complexion
sidles up, his hands black from ferreting in the skips. "I come every
day, twice," he tells me proudly. "I like to think of myself
as a sub-contractor. I've got my own little car-boot business." He
winks.
-
- How much does he make? "A hundred quid a week clear
profit, or more. Last week I bought a vase for £2. I sold it on for
£300." He scurries off again, clutching a £1.50 length
of piping and something else unidentifiable which he tucks hurriedly up
his jumper.
-
- This is perhaps merely the rural equivalent of eBay.
If Cherie Blair lived in the countryside, she would be snapping up bargain
heels here instead of online. I saw an Italian pair of purple platforms
that she would love, going for a song at 50p.
-
- But the sheer wantonness of our throwaway society is
depressing. Wareham is affluent but hardly Mayfair. Even Steve, for all
his nous, is not averse: "I don't wash my work jeans anymore. I just
throw them away and pick out a new pair from the trash."
-
- Environmental activist David Hieatt - who founded the
green fashion label Howies - believes we urgently need to rethink. "Chucking
away a speedboat or diamond rings is obscene. Fashion equals consumption
beyond necessity. And the rich man, poor man aspect of it is faintly chilling.
But if these products are getting a new life which keeps them out of the
ground, I guess it's for the best."
-
- Mike and Brenda Bullock, both 62, have recently moved
to Dorset from St Albans, Herts. They have been coming every Friday and
Saturday for four months. "We tried the dump in Poole," says
Brenda, "but it's not a patch on this. Clean, central, well laid-out."
She makes it sound like Marks & Spencer.
-
- Her husband, an engineer, adds: "Moving house generates
a lot of rubbish. We've thrown out a brick wall, a hedge. Nothing posh,
I don't think." Would he consider buying somebody else's rubbish?
-
- He pales. "Ooh no, we wouldn't want to do that.
The only thing I want at the moment is a boat." I tell him about the
£100 speedboat. Five minutes later I see him wander over to the selling
area, looking rather sheepish. Sadly, there are no boats on sale today.
Maybe tomorrow.
-
- © 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/story.jsp?story=534129
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