Fun facts about skip hire – things you didn’t know!

First things first… when did skip hire come about?

Here is some fun facts on skips, skips first appeared in the early 1920’s when they were used as an integral part of shaft mining. In the latter part of the 1920’s, Victorian houses began to be drastically remodelled and required the removal of large parts of the interior house. This lead to the sizes of skips increasing, in order to meet the needs of the individual customers.

After the second world war, DIY and interior decorating became more popular as people increasingly began to take up these activities as hobbies. In order to do so, people began to hire their own private skip’s more often. This resulted in the continued increase of skip hire and the subsequent growth of skip hire companies.

Why were skips originally yellow?

The Highways Act in the early 1970’s enforced extra regulations on the use of skips as their popularity grew. One rule was that all skips had to be coloured yellow as this time, it had been proven to be the easiest colour seen in the dark. However, as long as the skip is well-lit and made aware of by the correct signage and markers, skips can now come in a variety of colours!

How much waste is produced each year?

Recent figures have shown that over 200 million tonnes of waste is produced annually. Do you know how many slices of bread are thrown away yearly? A shocking 20 million (that’s 10 million sandwiches gone to waste!). As well as that, the average family home uses 6 trees worth of paper every year! With these distressing figures it’s no wonder the amount of skips hired yearly is increasing more and more. As a result of this, it is vital that recycling is taken seriously and that you use skip hire companies that recycle as much of their waste as possible, just like us here at Findaskip, we recycle 90% of our waste!

An outrageous 24 million tonnes of garden waste is disposed of and not recycled each year in the UK. Due to garden waste being one of the easiest things to recycle, for example, by simply mulching, the amount that is sent to landfill sites is simply unacceptable. By choosing to mulch your personal garden waste this would help decrease the total waste created by 12% each year!

Did you know? You could run a 100 watt light bulb for 4 hours with the energy created by recycling one glass bottle, and with just one plastic bottle you could power your computer for a whole 25 minutes!

Imagine the amount of energy we could create if we were to recycle all glass and plastic bottles like these shown in the picture above.

Strange and interesting things found in skips

Over the years, all sorts of weird and wacky things have been found in skips. These range from helpless furry animals to a WWII artillery shell and even a coffin (yes, a coffin!). In several cases, homeless people have been found in skips trying to escape from the harsh winter weather, this of course can come with extremely dangerous consequences.

It’s very important to remember that when you have a skip on hire, check its contents regularly. This is particularly relevant on the day of collection. This will help to ensure that nothing is in the skip that shouldn’t be. It is often the case that items are placed in the skip by passers by without the hirers permission.

You can read more about this here.

If you’re interested in refurbishing your home like The Victorians, or just need to get rid of a large amount of waste, we can certainly remove and dispose of it responsibly for you! If you need a skip visit us at FindaSkip or call us on 0800 019 4530.