Rats on the rise – how fly tipping is feeding 250 million rats in the UK!

The saying ‘you’re never more than 6ft away from a rat’ may be more of an urban myth than an actual fact, but there’s no getting away from it - the rat population is on the rise…and we’re giving them a helping hand!

In fact, the true figure for how far away we are from a rat at any given time is estimated to be 164ft or 50m – the length of an Olympic swimming pool. Not that far to swim, and not nearly far enough from disease-ridden wild rodents by many people’s reckoning.

But it’s not the relatively modest numbers with which we can calculate their distance from our elevenses that we need to be concerned about; it’s the sheer number of rats in our neighbourhoods. Current estimates put the UK’s rat population at 250 million – that’s more than three and a half times the human population! So why are rats on the rise? Because our rubbish is providing them with just the right environment to nest and breed, while offering them a banquet to feed their furry little families, that’s why!

And unless we take action to deal effectively with rubbish, through incineration, for example, and put an end to fly tipping, the problem is only going to get worse.

What’s causing the rat population to increase?

A far-from-perfect storm of conditions has seen the rat population in the UK multiply exponentially in recent years. While people were tucked away in their homes during lockdown, the rat population enjoyed an environment with rubbish piling up, no traffic and no humans. Rising rates of anti-social illegal dumping, along with lower social mobility during the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021, saw rat populations flourish. In city centres, as footfall fell, rats were less likely to be disturbed and had easier access to food waste and empty buildings, so rat numbers are estimated to have increased by 25%* since 2019 (*source: pest.co.uk).

We’re back about our usual business now, but that window of unfettered access to food without the usual perils of human activity boosted a rat population that shows no signs of decreasing. We are continuing to create an ideal breeding ground for rats, with plentiful food for them to scavenge.

Three ways we are encouraging rats to breed and thrive

We might not think that we’re giving rats the green light to increase their numbers and their proximity to our homes, but we are. Here’s how:

1.?????Fly tipping

Just like the rat population, fly tipping is on the increase. The latest government statistics for England (published in January 2023) indicate that local authorities dealt with?1.13 million fly-tipping incidents in 2020/21, an increase of 16%?on the previous year. And 65% of those fly-tips involved?household waste.

Pressure on local authority budgets has meant that many councils have reduced the frequency of refuge collections, leading people to dump waste in alleys, by the roadside…wherever they can find to get it out of their home when their bins are overflowing.

Add to this the increased waste being created by the ease of ordering take-out deliveries and the popularity of heavily packaged, processed foods amongst those with busy lifestyles, and it’s easy to see how quickly bins can fill up and excess rubbish has nowhere to go.

2.?????Landfill sites

A landfill site is rat paradise, with a huge array of food for rats to feast on, and plenty of places for them to set up home and play hide and seek with humans. As the level of waste we produce continues to rise, the challenge of managing the amount of waste being sent to landfill increases.

Incineration is a great alternative to landfill for handling municipal waste, and at Inciner8 we can even help local authorities to generate energy from incinerating waste with our waste to energy solutions.

3.?????Agricultural waste

Rats have been part of the farming landscape since the first farmers built a fence to keep their livestock from escaping and planted a seed in the ground to cultivate a crop. But they are also a menace to farmers. They carry diseases including hantavirus, leptospirosis, lymphocytic choriomeningitis (LCMV), Tularemia, and Salmonella, and they can also cause damage by chewing through wiring and equipment.

Inciner8’s range of agricultural incinerators are suitable for farm waste, animal by-product waste and fallen stock carcass disposal, helping to reduce the food source for rats, and thereby keep the rat population at bay.

How can we tackle our rat problem?

The rising rat population is great news for pest control companies, who are busier than ever, but not such good news for public health and our own peace of mind. Tackling the problem is much more complex than terminating the rats already scurrying around – indeed, research carried out at the Natural Resources Institute at Greenwich University suggests that a breed of ‘super-rats’ have developed a genetic resistance to anticoagulant rodenticides, which could make pest control much more difficult.

Instead, we need to focus on resolving the environmental factors that are making it so easy for rats to thrive. Incineration is the ideal way to tackle the waste that provides their food source and deal with the issues of fly tipping, food waste and landfill.

The general waste range from Inciner8 includes models of all sizes, from the i8-Sirrocco – a small, portable waste incinerator designed to tackle waste at source almost anywhere, through to the i8-1000G, our highest capacity general waste incinerator, which is perfect for suitable waste streams including solid waste, MSW, RDF, wood, paper, cardboard and plastics.

Incineration is not a complete answer to our problem with the rising rat population; behaviour change is also required to prevent fly-tipping and littering, along with tougher penalties and policing for those who dump waste instead of disposing of it responsibility. However, as local authorities, businesses and farms consider how to process waste, in the absence of a Pied Piper, incineration is an important component in the solution to stopping the rise of the rat.?