Hiring a skip can often be the most versatile and convenient way of getting rid of waste from your home whatever the project: kitchen or bathroom rip-out, garage clearance, new driveway etc. But the massive variances in price for skip hire across the UK, and indeed in your own local area, can often be very confusing. If you are searching for cheap skip hire, it will definitely pay you to take a moment or two to understand what actually goes into skip hire so you can make an informed choice.
The sad fact is that every 17 seconds someone somewhere in the UK is fly-tipping. Apart from the damage to the environment this causes, it is actually costing us law-abiding council tax payers to clean this mess up. Councils are the ones that have to clean it up and the bill is rising every year. When you see that advert in the back of your local newspaper for cheap skip hire or “man with van”, think very carefully about using them because if they are not properly licensed or they are charging less than £40 per tonne, it is highly likely they could be fly-tipping your waste.
Also, take a moment to think about the costs involved in skip hire. Firstly, there are the vehicles - these are heavy goods vehicles. The costs of purchase, insurance and fuel alone make them extremely expensive to run. Then the labour costs of the driver. Then the costs of marketing the company to get you to phone them. Then the costs of recycling the waste. This is an interesting area - the amount of landfill in the UK is running out, and the taxes for using the landfill space are going up each year. This means that skip hire operatives are being squeezed on both sides because the cost of recycling is hugely expensive. Even when it is automated, using trommels and magnets and wind machines, the capital investment to install this machinery is usually upwards of £300,000. Most of the UK skip hire industry is investing heavily to be able to recycle most of your waste, and reduce landfill, but it’s going to take a few years before the have burden of this capital outlay is recouped - then we may see the cost of recycling drop somewhat.
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