The British countryside is increasingly under siege from a scourge of illegal waste dumping – polluting both water and air – but one man is bravely taking the criminals on, staking out their sites with night vision goggles, drones and more.

In a three-part, 'true eco-crime' podcast series for the Mongabay Newscast, investigative environmental journalists Lucy Taylor and Dan Ashby trace this illegal 'waste trail' from their quiet English town to the nearby countryside, and as far away as Poland.

Threatened, chased, but undeterred, waste investigator Martin Montague has also established a website, Clearwaste, to document incidents of 'fly-tipping' as the practice is known, and people use it daily to report tens of thousands of incidents all over the country, where illegal landfills are also on the rise.

Episodes two and three will air in the coming weeks and take the issue to a wider European scope, discussing it with Interpol and visiting a destination for U.K. waste in Poland.

Banner image: A mountain of UK plastic waste near Wespack Recycling Factory in Malaysia, via Greenpeace Media Library.

Please invite your friends to subscribe to the Mongabay Newscast wherever they get podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, or download our free app in the Apple App Store or in the Google Store to get access to our latest episodes at your fingertips.

This episode is "The Waste Mountain" and is part one of the podcast series, "Into the Wasteland," developed with the support of Journalismfund.eu.

If you enjoy the Newscast, please visit www.patreon.com/mongabay to pledge a dollar or more to keep the show growing, Mongabay is a nonprofit media outlet and all support helps!

See all our latest news from nature's frontline at Mongabay's homepage: news.mongabay.com or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by searching for @mongabay.

Please share your thoughts and feedback! [email protected].

Get full access to Planet: Critical at www.planetcritical.com/subscribe