To Waste Disposal or not to Waste Disposal...

[Daveyboy]

Thought I'd share this to those who do or might be tempted to transport waste from a job....

I have recently registered with the Environment Agency as a carrier of controlled waste and it has cost me £152 and I'm now registered for three years. Why? Because, quite often I get rid of the building waste from my jobs for my clients when it's not possible to get a skip in, and I always take waste materials that I can recycle (copper, lead, aluminium, etc). If I didn't register and got stopped by police, was involved in an accident, etc, I could have got fined up to £5000 and end up with a criminal record. Below is the extract from the Environment Agency website.

"Unless you qualify for an exemption, if you want to transport controlled waste in England and Wales as part of your business or with a view to profit, you need to register as a waste carrier. However, you don't need to do this if:

• you are carrying waste that you have produced, unless it is building or demolition waste;
• you are moving waste between different places within the same premises; you are transporting waste from outside Great Britain to a place within it and the waste is not landed in Great Britain until it arrives at that place;
• the waste is being transported by sea or air from a place in Great Britain to a place outside Great Britain.

The current charges (2009-10) for registering as a carrier or broker of controlled waste are:

• Registration of carriers and brokers: £152
• Renewal of registration: £102"

I have not listed the exemptions as they do not apply to the construction industry - if you move any waste or bi-product from a job, you have to be registered as a waste carrier. Because I used to take the waste back to my yard and dump it in a skip, I thought I might be exempt so I e-mailed the Environment Agency to see if I could be exempt. Their reply was:

"If you transport controlled waste as part of your business or for profit, you are required to register as a waste carrier (unless you fall under a notifiable or non-notifiable exemption). You have to register even if you only transport small amounts of controlled waste.

It is recommended that you are registered as you are likely at some point in the course of your business to be carrying waste which has arisen as a result of building/construction or demolition activities.
You will need to register as a waste carrier if;

• you carry away old pipes/wires that someone else has produced.
• you carry away waste removed from bathroom fittings (e.g. toilets, baths etc.) or kitchen fittings (e.g. sinks, units etc.)
• If you carry away waste which formed part of the property structure (e.g. plasterboard or cement/plaster waste) then you do need to be registered as this is regarded as building/demolition waste.

You will not need to register if;

• you carry away off cuts of pipes and wires you have produced unless it has been produced as part of construction or demolition activities."

So there you have it. Having spent £152 (works out roughly £51 a year), I can now legally transport waste.

Oh, the down side is that every time I do so, I have to fill in a very detailed form basically saying I'm collecting waste from me, transporting it to me, taking it off me and putting it in a skip and signing it twice to say I've done this.

Still, I am assured this is progress and the right way to protect the environment....At least if I get stopped I will be legal

[whitebeam]

The thing that bothers me is you have a skip to dump your rubbish, what about the rest of us who don't have that privilege, where do we go. I have a lock up on a farm but the guy who owns it is very enviromental and there's no chance of keeping a skip, he also is'nt allowed to burn his empty boxes which contained chemicals and has a skip for the cardboard.

Customers are going to have to realise the cost of dumping and pay the costs

[CJ]

Lost count of the customers who have asked me to take away the waste..........and then think I'm being snotty when I say "I can't, I'm not allowed and not licenced"

[Fekin]

It's just pure madness

[Daveyboy]

Aha! well, by registering as a waste carrier you can then take the waste to a controlled waste disposal site and dispose of it there...but of course you would have to pay to do that and I don't know what those costs are..

Mind you, if I did that at least I would only have to sign the form once..

[Frosty]

I registered a few years ago.
Had an accident in the van and low and behold I was asked for my waste licence.
When I immediately produced it from the dash board it surprised the policeman, he was then pretty good natured towards me from that point on!!!!

I always put a separate item of cost for disposal on all quotes, ranging from £15 upwards. This gives the client a choice. Some query the cost, when I explain briefly about this government tax they always see it from my side of things.

I also use the licence as a selling aid with clients/companies proving I'm a more responsible contractor than those who aren't registered. Doesn't always work, but it's certainly helped to win a couple of jobs £4K plus

[Dan]

Well done Frosty (always get the snowman tune in my mind when I say/type that). That's the road I'd go down I think. Get all the certs and state I have them in the quotes, and boast about it to the customers. I'd probably hang them in the van in frames too knowing me

If you think about it, you can sort of profit from such a charge as you'd certainly want to at least cover the cost, so why not charge a bit more for it and have a reason you like the waste license?!

[Dave Ramsden]

does this also give you rights to dump at your local council tip because I wasnt allowed to even dump leaft over stuff from when I moved house...?

[Oli]

does this also give you rights to dump at your local council tip because I wasnt allowed to even dump leaft over stuff from when I moved house...?

Not where I live, you have to pay to dump waster from a van no matter what it is, you get a pass sticker to put in your windscreen of your car and can take whatever you want from your own home to the tip, but go in a van even to dump your own stuff and you get a grilling and they try to charge you.

My mate hired a van to pick up a setee he bought, then we went down the tip with the old one, they were having none of it and tried to make out we were some sort of professional setee dumpers

They let us in eventaully after I told them i'd to sit on it at the roadside outside the tip whilst he went and got his car so we could put it on the roof and drive it through the gates using his car with the his sticker in the windscreen because by there rules that would have been fine

[Fred]

Here in Kingston, SW London, we now have a permit for each house hold to enter the site, no current permit no bumping. BUT I can't use it for my work waste, so I now charge my clients £40 to take it away, put it in my garage, when full I have this Polish bloke who has a waste permit take a garage full for £150. Thats what my dump wants each visit, so I win long term.

[doug boardley]

it is all getting too bureaucratic and all that will happen will be an increase in fly tipping. It's double standards that whilst I can't carry waste in my van (without an exemption) I can load my 8'x6' single axle trailer up and go to my local council tip as often as I like so long as I'm towing it with the car. I'm not sure what the law is on this, but I've never been queried when I've done it. I hasten to add that I've only done this with rubble etc from home and not from a job!

[Rob Z]

Back before they started getting to be such a PITA around here with trash disposal at the landfill, I took my old dishwasher over to the dump and drove to the appliance area to get rid of it (at that time, homeowners could dump free of charge anything that could be recycled, such as an appliance).

Well, the scale operator came flying out of his booth, screaming and cursing at me, and I think he decided to change his tune once he got a good look at me. He still was a nasty SOB, and I finally figured out that he thought I was a plumber bringing a dishwasher from one of my jobs. He wouldn't believe me that the dishwasher was from my own house...he insisted that I must be a plumber because I had a van with a bunch of tools in it. He didn't seem to get it when I said "See all those trowels and saws in there? Does it look like a plumbing van? " What a d-bag he was.

Now that same county won't take any trash generated by a business or contractor....it must all come through licensed trash haulers. If you have a half of a pickup load of trash from your job---too bad. Imagine the expense and hassle now of getting a dumpster or trash hauler just for small loads.

[grumpygrouter]

Anybody considered using the "Hippo Sack" system? It seems to be an easily quantifiable cost which can be added to the estimate and is simple to use....buy the bag, fill it up and then ring someone to take it away........!!!

[Rob Z]

Grumpy, I wanted to use that on a recent job, but they have all kind of restrictions about where the bag has to be placed before they will pick it up with their crane on the truck. Overhead wires were what stopped the recent attempt....I hope to try it on the next job where there are no wires on the same side of the street.

The bag is $30, and the first pickup is $129, with each additional bag on the same trip costing $99. There is a 3000 lb weight limit per bag.

Seems like a good deal if I can just work out the site conditions.

[Daveyboy]

Anybody considered using the "Hippo Sack" system? It seems to be an easily quantifiable cost which can be added to the estimate and is simple to use....buy the bag, fill it up and then ring someone to take it away........!!!

Definately a good idea for guys/gals doing small jobs (rip out tiles and retile) Grumpy...On bigger jobs (whole bathrooms) I suppose you could also cut up acrylic baths/shower trays, smash up resin trays/ WCs/basins/cast iron baths and disc cut up steel baths/shower enclosure profiles/frames, but you would need to factor in the labour cost of doing this.