If you decide to tidy up the garden and have a large amount of garden waste and rubbish that has been hanging round waiting for this very opportunity to throw it away, hiring a skip may well be the most practical option, rather than piling dirty bags overflowing with garden waste and soil covered bricks, rubble and concrete slabs in the back of the car for multiple trips to the local tip.

Similarly if you’re clearing out the garage, attic, kids bedrooms or maybe moving house and have come across all sorts of broken items, outdated and beyond repair pieces of furniture or things set aside to ‘do something with’ one day, you may decide to call on your local reliable skip hire company to come to the rescue and deliver a skip to take away your unwanted junk. Or you may be having building work done, fitting a new kitchen or bathroom or replacing fencing or paving in your garden and need the old items out of the way to make room for the new. Whatever you need to hire a skip for, there are a number of items you may not realise cannot be dumped in a skip along with normal domestic household waste.

The following items cannot be thrown away in a skip and have to be disposed of following the proper environmental agency guidelines:

1. asbestos
2. WEEE – waste electrical and electronic equipment
3. paint
4. florescent lamps and light bulbs
5. plasterboard
6. tyres
7. solvents and liquids including waste oil and fuel

Asbestos

Asbestos is known to be a dangerous and carcinogenic substance. It was used for insulation and as a fire proofing material between the 1950s and the mid 1980s in a large number of public buildings such as hospitals, universities and schools, as well as in domestic properties. Buildings built since 2000 won’t have any asbestos content however.

Asbestos is dangerous when it is damaged as the fibres that can cause diseases that are nearly always fatal or at very least are very debilitating, and therefore has to be removed by a licensed contractor. There have been a number of reports recently of tradespeople such as electricians and builders who have been exposed to asbestos when working in properties, as the fibres are dispersed into the air when the asbestos is disturbed, so it is important to take care when work is being carried out in a property that could contain asbestos.

Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE)

WEEE includes all electrical items from white goods such as fridges and freezers, to computers, televisions and hard drives and even smaller items like kettles, toasters and camcorders. There are a number of dangerous substances that can be contained in old electrical items, from CFC’s (chlorofluorocarbons) contained in old fridges and freezers, to phosphorus coating that needs to be removed from the inside of screens on TVs, computer monitors and other items with screens like digital cameras, and lead that is contained within CRT’s (cathode ray tubes) such as those in old computer screens and TVs. It is important that these chemicals are removed prior to disposal, partly to comply with waste disposal legislation, but also to ensure the chemicals don’t damage the environment and leak into ground water supplies.

Some retailers offer take back schemes for WEEE, but there are also over 1500 designated collection facilities for waste electronic equipment.

Paint

Paint must be disposed of responsibly and should never be emptied into water courses or drains. Most local authority tips or recycling centres have paint collection points where you can take old or unwanted paint. This is often used for community repainting schemes.

Florescent Light Bulbs

The main hazard with light bulbs is that they contain mercury which if disposed of in landfill sites can find its way into ground water and rivers and can build up cumulatively in the food chain.

Plasterboard

Plasterboard cannot be disposed of in skips and taken to the same sites as other biodegradable waste because of the high levels of sulphates it contains, therefore this must be disposed of either through a recycling plant or within a specific plasterboard cell at a landfill site.

Some skip hire companies may be able to arrange disposal of the items that cannot be thrown away in the skip with your other rubbish, but if they do not offer this service, either the skip hire firm or your local authority should be able to advise on where your local recycling or disposal site is. Most local recycling centres do now collect computer and TV screens, fridges and white goods, paint, oil and light bulbs as well as most other unwanted items.

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2. What Are Roll On Roll Off Skips?
3. More Helpful Hints on Hiring A Skip
4. Safe Guards Put In Place For Waste Management
5. Sheffield Skip Firm Removes Dumped Tyres