Hiring a skip can be a fantastic way of removing unwanted clutter from your home, garden and workplace. However long gone are the days where a hired skip was little more than a giant bin for anything and everything. Environmental standards and strict environmental legislation in the disposal of waste products means that if you wish to hire a skip, you must be well versed in what you can and cannot put into the skip.
The first thing you should do is to understand what you can NOT put into a skip. Failure to understand that there are limits in what you can put into a skip can cost you a lot of money. The following items are strictly prohibited from being disposed of via a skip:
- Asbestos or plasterboard.
- Anything that carries the risk of exploding, such as gas canisters or bottles.
- Any battery.
- Hazardous and toxic materials.
- Paint and cans of paint.
- Petrocarbons such as oil, petrol and diesel.
- Tyres.
- Electrical appliances such as TVs and computer screens.
- Freezers.
- Air conditioning units.
- Fluorescent tubes.
- Medical waste such as discarded personal protective equipment and syringes.
If you do not have any of these prohibited items, then according to http://www.gov.co.uk, you should then decide whether to use a skip hire company or hire a skip yourself. If you wish to hire a skip yourself, then you must apply for a license from your local council to place that skip on a public road. Furthermore, you might be required to use reflective markings, traffic cones and nighttime safety lamps on and around the skip to comply with highway code regulations. Failure to do so can result in a fine of up to £1000. Of course, if you use a hire skip company, the company will have all the relevant licenses and safety equipment.
You must also decide what type of skip you want in terms of size and also use. For example, you might wish to dispose of building materials in which case you will need to hire an ‘inert waste’ skip. However, if you have mixed waste to dispose of a ‘mixed waste’ skip is what you will need. According to www.anyjunk.co.uk, failure to hire the right skip for your waste can result in the skip company returning your inappropriate waste to you.
Furthermore, you are ultimately responsible for whatever is in your skip, which unfortunately includes any fly-tipped waste. Therefore you should be looking to use a skip cover as a way of deterring fly-tippers from using your skip. According to AMA Waste in the last year alone, there were 711,000 incidents of fly-tipping costing the UK economy a whopping £36.4!
In closing, you really should make sure that you know the type of waste you wish to dispose of before hiring a skip, as not all waste can be disposed of via a skip. You should then decide what type of skip you want to use and whether you wish to use a private company or hire a skip yourself. And finally, you should then make sure that the waste that is going into the skip is the right waste for that skip type and is wholly your waste. Failure to respect and adhere to these UK regulations on skip hire can prove to be a costly mistake.