A man has been fined £400 after leaving a rotary clothesline on the ground at a recycling site. David O’Driscoll, from Cwmbach, left the rotary clothesline on a grass verge about 20 feet from the waste containers because he was fed up of waiting for the site to start accepting waste.

Mr O’Driscoll had arrived at Bryn Pica recycling centre in Llwydcoed, near Aberdare, at 8.30am on Sunday 21 July. He entered the site and was stuck in traffic for around 30 minutes before his wife Diane asked a site worker what was going on.

Mr O’Driscoll said the worker told his wife that the landfill was temporarily not accepting rubbish because so many people had come that morning and demand was getting out of control. Mr O’Driscoll said it was after 9.10am and he had to be somewhere else, so he decided to leave the clothesline on the ground next to the rubbish disposal area. He said he believed one of the workers could dispose of it at a later time.

Read more: The story of the abandoned Welsh chapel covered in a carpet of ivy

Read more: 19-year-old teenager turns second-hand clothing into a thriving, six-figure business

A few days later, the couple received a letter in the mail from Dean Vaughan, a senior highways manager, telling Mr O’Driscoll that he must attend a meeting with him or face a £50,000 fine or six months in prison. Mr O’Driscoll attended the meeting at Rhondda Cynon Taf’s headquarters on the Treforest industrial estate on Thursday 14 August, where he was informed that he would be fined £400 for illegally dumping rubbish.

Speaking to WalesOnline after the decision, Mr O’Driscoll said: “I went to the recycling centre, waited a long time and decided that the best thing to do at that time was to put the line out on the floor of the recycling centre for staff to deal with if they were able. I genuinely felt that was acceptable. In hindsight I can understand why it was not acceptable but I was surprised at the wording of the letter and I am surprised that they consider what I did to be illegal dumping. I looked up the definition of illegal dumping which is ‘The illegal dumping of waste on land that does not have a permit to accept it.'”

Mr O’Driscoll recalls the events of the morning when he reached the dump: “I didn’t empty the car. I took a clothesline out of the boot and put it on the ground next to the dumpsters. When the letter came in the mail I turned white as a sheet. I couldn’t believe it. They said I could spend six months in prison because of a previous conviction.”

“Although I now accept that what I did may not have been right, I couldn’t believe how ruthless it was. To me it bordered on farce. I can’t believe where it all led.

“I said in the interview that I thought common sense would have prevailed and I would have received a reprimand and maybe a warning. I honestly can’t believe it. If I had done it in front of the recycling center or dropped it on a street, I would definitely have faced consequences, but it didn’t even occur to me at the time that what I had done was wrong. I quoted them the definition of illegal dumping in the interview and they replied, ‘You didn’t put it in a designated container.'”

A spokesperson for Rhondda Cynon Taf District Council said an investigation was underway. He said: “The council can confirm that an individual was interviewed following an incident of illegal waste disposal and received a £400 fixed penalty notice. This case is currently ongoing and is the subject of an ongoing investigation.”