We ask people a lot of questions when they book, and we know it can seem like fuss. The reason is that a contaminated skip load is not a filing problem, it is a load that has stopped being useful, and occasionally it is a load that is dangerous to the people handling it. Since everything we collect comes back to our own site rather than going to a third party, we see exactly what turns up. Our Southport skip hire customers are as good as any, and these are the things that go wrong.
Lithium batteries are the serious one
This has become the biggest single safety issue in the waste industry and most people have no idea it is a problem.
Rechargeable lithium batteries are now in everything. Power tools, vapes, phones, laptops, toys, cordless vacuums, electric scooters, cordless doorbells, greetings cards that play a tune. When one of those is crushed or punctured, which is exactly what happens to anything in a skip that gets tipped and handled, the cell can go into thermal runaway and ignite.
It does not need a spark and it does not need to have any charge left in it. It burns extremely hot, it is very difficult to extinguish, and in a pile of mixed waste it has everything it needs to spread. Fires at waste and recycling facilities caused this way are a well documented and growing problem across the industry.
So anything with a rechargeable battery in it needs to come out. Not tucked underneath something, not with the rest of the electricals. Out, and into the proper stream, which our guide to sorting electrical waste before your skip arrives covers. Vapes in particular turn up constantly and nobody thinks of them as electrical items.
Gas canisters and aerosols
The same principle for a different reason. Camping gas cartridges, patio heater bottles, old fire extinguishers and part full aerosols are all pressurised, and pressurised containers in a load that gets tipped, pushed and crushed are a hazard to whoever is working on it.
An aerosol that feels empty usually is not, because propellant remains after the product has gone. Take them to a household waste site that accepts them.
The one paint tin
This is the most common contamination we see and it is entirely well intentioned. Somebody clearing a garage puts the tins in with everything else because they are only small.
Liquid paint is not skip waste. It leaks, it spreads through the load, and it turns material that would have been recovered into material that cannot be. One tin can affect a surprising proportion of a container.
The workaround is simple. Leave the lids off outside for a couple of weeks and let what is left dry solid, or mix in sand or cat litter to harden it. Once it has set hard it is a different proposition. Our guide to hazardous waste and why it cannot go in a skip covers the wider category.
Plasterboard in a mixed load
This one is not about safety, it is about the rules. Gypsum has to be kept separate from general waste, and a few offcuts thrown into a mixed container compromise the whole load.
It happens most often on small jobs, where somebody has replaced a bit of boarding around a doorway and thinks a couple of pieces will not matter. Our page on plasterboard disposal and building waste separation explains why it does.
The fragment of cement sheeting
The one that concerns us most. Somebody takes down an old shed or garage roof, most of it goes for proper disposal, and a few broken pieces end up in the skip because they were already loose on the ground.
If there is any chance material of that kind is present, none of it goes in a container. Not the small bits. Our drivers are trained to look for it and will decline a load rather than take a chance, and that is the right call every time.
Why any of this matters to you
The honest commercial answer is that a contaminated load costs more to deal with, and that cost ends up somewhere. But the reason we care goes further than that.
We run our own recycling centre rather than tipping loads elsewhere, which means we see what comes back and we control what happens to it. Clean rubble becomes hardcore that goes back into use. Clean green waste becomes compost that goes onto land. Timber, metal and board all have routes. Our environmental and recycling page sets out how the sorting works.
Every one of those routes depends on the load being what it is supposed to be. A clean load is worth something to everybody. A contaminated one is a cost to be managed.
What to do if you are not sure
Ring us. That is the whole answer. We would far rather spend two minutes on the phone telling you that something is fine than have a driver decline a load on your driveway, and we would rather tell you something is not fine before it goes in than after.
Our guide to what you can put in a skip is the reference, and if the item is not on it, ask. Nobody has ever annoyed us by checking.
We cover the whole of this coast daily, running Birkdale skip hire and Formby skip hire jobs alongside Southport.
Ring us on 01704 779345 with anything you are unsure about. Our contact page works just as well, and a photograph usually settles it in one message.
