OPINION: People take new waste laws on board quicker than you’d think

When new POPs waste laws came into effect in January this year, some waste management companies and local authorities took the news better than others.

East Cambridgeshire District Council, for example, had to temporarily stop accepting soft furniture while they got to grips with how to manage a new waste type they didn’t have the capacity to deal with. And they weren’t the only ones.

But seven months on, POPS legislation has become another accepted part of waste management, despite its inevitably shaky introduction.

This is a very promising result, proving that people are more willing to adopt new habits that keep waste out of landfill than we typically give them credit for.

What was all the fuss about?

New Environment Agency (EA) rules for POPs waste mean that throwing sofas, armchairs, padded office seating and practically any other soft thing you sit on into skips and general rubbish is no longer acceptable.

So for people hiring a skip from SunSkips for a general clearout, this has meant that household furniture that might have been thrown in last year – like a broken dining chair with torn cushioning – can’t be put in the container with the rest of the rubbish.

These changes come from an EA investigation that found Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) present in furniture waste, making it too hazardous to be recycled or taken to landfill both for the environment and human health.

MORE: POPs waste: New rules for throwing away soft seating

Even though manufacturers no longer use POPs in soft seating, there was a significant enough amount of chemicals found to ban it from standard waste collections.

So instead of putting soft furniture through our standard screening lines at SunSkips to extract as much valuable material from it as possible, it now has to be incinerated at an authorised facility.

All this has made life a bit difficult for private waste services and local governments who hadn’t built the infrastructure necessary to process soft seating – and it’s an expensive endeavour. Essex County Council recently launched a tender worth £6.8 million for a new waste partner just to take care of the area’s soft seating waste.

Councils are once again accepting soft seating waste, but in the meantime were forced to find storage solutions while agreements were hastily put in place.

SunSkips, which already had relationships with energy from waste suppliers, was quick to find a solution for our customers in Suffolk and Cambridgeshire so they didn’t need to hang onto old sofas any longer than necessary.

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It took a bit of working out (because nobody wanted to be the first to dip their toe in the water and get started) but it seems the country has finally settled into sustainable soft seating disposal.

Most of us assumed that it would be customers and residents who would struggle to get their heads around the new legislation, but in my experience, they were the quickest to get the message.

Suffolk and Cambridgeshire residents cotton on fast

Because so many households struggle to manage their recycling, I suppose it’s easy to assume that a lot of people would simply ignore the rules and stick soft furnishings in their skips anyway, forcing councils and waste management companies to police them into doing things properly.

But at SunSkips, we were pleasantly surprised to find almost everyone has been declaring their soft seating waste so we can dispose of it legally.

If you think about it, learning not to chuck your old sofa in a skip is actually a pretty simple concept to grasp compared with the complex task of sorting your rubbish into multiple different recycling bins.

MORE: What can’t you put in a skip?: A UK skip hire guide

The general consensus is that people are listening. Of course, we’ve had a couple of customers who missed the big pop-up notices on our website and guidance sent with our terms and conditions, then blamed us for the change in legislation. But because it’s been all over the news, by and large, people are getting it.

It didn’t take people long to realise that they only need to let us know that they have POPs waste to throw away and we’ll be there to take it away in a separate collection.

SunSkips customers are pretty good at following skip hire rules

But while most people appear to have taken the new restrictions on board, it doesn’t mean they really understand what’s going on.

SunSkips social media followers have been asking why sofas are so dangerous that they can’t be put in a skip, but no one’s stopping them sitting on them in our homes.

It’s a very good question. I can’t explain why throwing an old sofa in the bin is against the law, but no one’s campaigning to clear out the garages and attics of seating that could be hazardous.

MORE: How to get rid of an old sofa the right way

But the important thing is that the changes have come into effect without any major drama.

And as we work towards the goal of Net Zero by 2050, this is unlikely to be the only big shift in waste regulations that people will need to acclimatise to.

The public’s acceptance of new POPs waste rules bodes well for meeting the ambitious target on time, and I’m interested to see where the EA might go next.

More regulated waste on the horizon?

The news on the street is that because the shift towards banning POPs waste from landfill has gone relatively well, the EA is going to look at what else can be kept out.

Carpets, mattresses, certain textiles, stain-resistant fabrics, and non-stick items like frying pans are probably next in line. If the EA feels like it can get away with designating something as POPs waste, then it probably will do.

I’m not a scientist, so I don’t know exactly what the dangers are in terms of POPs being released into the environment, but any restrictions that relieve landfills are all right in my book.

New waste laws are not as dramatic as people think. Everyone throws their hands up when these things are announced, but we see things get under control pretty quickly.

With any new legislation, I think they just get it out there and see how people take to it. With POPs waste, they realised pretty quickly that some were struggling, so put out a statement saying this wouldn’t be enforced right away and that instead they’d be focusing on helping businesses and councils become compliant.

POPS waste legislation hasn’t impacted SunSkips as a business. Soft seating is a common waste type for domestic clearouts, but people are willing to pay for the additional service to deal with it, because no one wants a knock on the door from the EA.

In my opinion, steadily introducing new items to be kept out of landfill is a good thing, as long as you’re not asking people to do anything massively complicated, they’ll adopt it without too much fuss.

SunSkips is a professional waste management service provider that respects government decisions aimed at protecting the environment and public health. Contact our friendly team to learn more about working with SunSkips to make sure your waste flows meet government regulations.