Is Hiring a Skip Better Than Trips to the Tip?
Whether you’re planning a house clearance, some landscaping or a kitchen refresh, you’re likely to have a lot of waste to get rid of. Skips are just the tool for the job, but if you’ve gone to hire a skip and seen mentions of light and heavy waste, you may be left wondering which skip is suitable for your needs.
We’re going to take a closer look at this below. So, if you’re unclear on the difference between light and heavy waste skips, read closely!
What is light waste?
A variety of objects fall under the umbrella of light waste but, as the name suggests, all of them have one thing in common: low weight relative to their size. Examples of light waste include:
- Green waste like trimmings, branches and plants (NOT soil, we’ll get to that later)
- Small items of furniture and household appliances, like fridges, microwaves, tables and chairs
- Lighter building materials, like plywood sheets or bits of wood and timber
- All other smaller, lighter items, including plastic and cardboard boxes and other paper or plastic items
What is heavy waste?
All things hefty fall into this category – items that weigh a lot given their size. Typical examples of heavy waste include:
- Soil and sand. Yes, it’s light in small doses, but fill an entire skip with the stuff and it will weigh an awful lot
- Heavy building materials, like bricks, stone, gravel, tiles, concrete and so on
- Larger green waste, like rocks, tree trunks and stumps
Which skip do I need?
Because heavy waste tends to take up more space than light waste, you might think a larger 10, 12 or even 16 yard skip would be the best option. Not so. These larger skips have to be weight-restricted, because if they were filled entirely with heavy waste they’d be dangerous to load and transport – no skip lorry could cope!
12 and 16 yard skips can only be filled with light waste – a 10 yard skip is the only one you can load entirely with heavy waste. If you mainly have light waste to get rid of, there’s a handy rule of thumb you can follow. Each ‘yard’ of a skip can accommodate around 10 full bin bags of waste – an 8 yard skip can house around 80 bags, for instance.
We hope that’s been helpful! If you’re still not sure which size you need though – or you’d like to get a quote for skip hire in Cambridge – please don’t hesitate to get in touch with our team.
