What3words being used in innovative way by Newark and Sherwood District Council in efforts to clean up fly-tipping activity

A district council is using technology in an innovative bid to tackle fly-tipping.

Newark and Sherwood District Council are now telling people to use the What3words free mobile app or the online map at the system's website: what3words.com

What3words is a system that has divided the world into three-metre squares and gave each square a unique combination of three words.

It is an easy way to find and share exact locations, especially when the location is remote or hard to find with an address alone.

The What3words website says: "The words are distributed by a mathematical algorithm; they are fixed and will never change."

The technology is being used all over the world and is especially prevalent in the search and rescue community.

As time has gone on, more organisations have thought of ways to utilise the system effectively and now the council is offering the service to residents in its area to report fly-tipping.

"You can use What3Words to help us find a reported fly-tip," said a spokesman from the Newark and Sherwood District Council.

"Sometimes it can be difficult for our officers to find fly-tips based on location descriptions or even with street addresses.

"They aren’t always accurate enough to specify precise locations, especially in rural areas.

"What3Words allows you to pinpoint the fly-tip location on a map, giving you a unique combination of 3 words for that specific 3-metre square, meaning we can find the site more efficiently and remove the fly-tipped waste faster."