News

The first, which is good news for responsible house clearance companies in Perth & the rest of the UK, is the Environment Agency, which has launched a nationwide crack-down on an estimated 850 illegally operating house clearance services, with the ultimate aim of bringing them all within the licensing system. The exercise, headed by a well-respected regulator, will be carried out over the next twelve months. The regulator explains: “The environment does need protection from the adverse effects of the fly tipping house clearance companies, but the regulatory regime has to reflect both that priority and the enormous environmental benefits the industry brings.”

House Clearance Paisley recyclables have hit record lows. Many house clearance owners in Paisley & the rest of the UK for that matter report that the current situation is the worst in the last forty years, and if you take today’s overheads into account, the worst ever.

Most house clearance operators would probably agree that a small percentage of waste that would normally be recycled is being sent to landfill instead of being separated at source for recovery, as the value of the material is not sufficient to encourage separation, storage, collection, transportation and processing overheads.

The Environment Agency has just released its annual report for 2014, in which it claims that it achieved its target on inspecting waste management sites & house clearance operator headquaters. Its aim was to increase the frequency of inspection of waste management licences by 25% & house clearance companies by 20%, ensuring that all sites were inspected at least once during the one year period. Well, by recruiting more waste inspectors, they managed to raise the inspection frequency from less than 60% in 2013 to 75% at present.

The Budget offered mixed blessings for the Middlesbrough house clearance industry. The Landfill Tax was increased from £7 to £10 for ‘active’ waste, and it seems possible that some house clearance waste could be exempted from the Tax if is it is not for landfill. If so some of the pressure on house clearance companies could be greatly reduced: a cost saving which could be passed on down the rest of the recycling chain.

Parliament have set out to increase the UK recycling rates for waste in line with the EC Waste Directive, which requires member states to achieve recovery rates of between 50% and 65% by 2018. As is often the case with legislation originating in Brussels, the full ramifications are not yet clear especially for us in The Dundee house clearance business. You would expect legislation designed to increase recycling rates to benefit the recycling & house clearance industry here is Dundee.

As you can see in our special feature on house clearance in the Edinburgh area, the export of recyclables could soon be fraught with difficulties. Trade in secondhand electronics, which has been encouraged by the Government in recent years, could be made illegal thanks to the wranglings of a few faceless Euro-bureaucrats. Nobody within the recycling industry or house clearance world thinks that containers filled with dangerous batteries should be dumped on the poor nations of the world, to poison the environment and pollute the land for generations to come.

In one of the most bizarre house clearance fly-tipping incidents of recent times, over 2 ton of house clearance furniture dumped in the middle of a road near Glasgow. On 16th May, local Environment Agency waste regulation officers reported that the house clearance furniture had been dumped in a very dangerous position on a road just off the the main motorway into Glasgow. The pile was 25 metres long, and Ian Jobes, local EA waste manager commented, “Fly tipping of house clearance furniture is something which occurs far too often and these have been dumped with a total disregard for safety on an unlit road. They must have been tipped overnight and a motorist coming round the corner at speed could have crashed into it all.”

Changes were on the cards for some trade associations: the UK House Clearance Association gained a lot of new members and a more dynamic public profile; while rumours of a merger between two of Edinburghs largest waste transfer stations were well and truly scotched. The National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors also changed its name to the Environmental Services Association; and who could forget the attempts to rid the house clearance industry in Edinburgh of the phrase ‘man and van’.

The Government’s commitment to waste minimisation has lead to a certain amount of change, perhaps the most obvious example of which is the introduction of a new tax. However, the three R’s philosophy of reduce, reuse, recycle has been slightly distorted. We in the house clearance business have been recycling upto 90% of waste for years.

With the amount of new legislation affecting house clearance these days, perhaps some of us should consider a career change as we now have a fair amount of legal experience. After all, lawyers earn pots of money, and do not have to face the environmental Spanish Inquisition. My desk is heaving with consultative documents for this, regulations for that, European consultation papers, directives… And yet, despite the barrage of legislation, mounds of red tape, science fiction-like bureaucracy and faceless officials, house clearance companies keep their shoulders to the grindstone.