A man in Catania, Sicily, trained his dog to dump rubbish bags by the roadside in an attempt to outsmart anti-fly-tipping cameras, municipal police have said. The ‘canine courier’ was caught on newly installed surveillance footage, prompting officers to post the clip on the city’s official Facebook page with a pointed message: ‘Inventiveness can never become an alibi for incivility.’ The owner has since been identified and fined.
Illegal dumping is a chronic problem across Italy, particularly in the south. Authorities recorded more than 9,300 waste-related offences in 2023 – a 66% increase on the previous year – as councils increasingly turn to camera traps and smart monitoring systems to catch offenders in the act
