The True Cost of Scrap Thieves Stealing From Your Skip – It’s Time to Restrict Access

When you hire a skip, you fill it with waste and think nothing of it until the skip company comes to pick up the skip. However, you might have noticed that some of the waste you place in there is going missing overnight or you might have seen people coming to check out your waste during the day.

These people are looking for nothing more than waste that is valuable to them and this is mainly scrap metal which can be found in certain equipment or in its raw form. While you might think that there is no harm in this and you might even see it as a good thing because it frees up more space, you might want to think about the overall implications and how it could be costing you money.

What is the Harm of Scrap Thieves Taking Waste?

The price you pay for your skip covers a lot of overhead costs that come with managing waste and that is why you pay what you pay for your skip. However, there are costs associated with placing waste in landfill and costs associated with recyclable material and so, the cost of a general mixed waste skip is subsidised based on this.

So, those scrap thieves aren’t doing you a favour but they are in fact hitting your wallet. The reality is that most skip hire companies will base their prices on a certain percentage of waste being recyclable while some materials can be processed and sold. Much of this material will include scrap metal but if that is taken out before they receive it, then they are losing out on money and that will mean that these losses will have to be recovered by increasing the price of skip hire.

There is more to this though as scrap thieves can cause you a lot of problems because they simply do not care about the issues they cause. Some of the scrap metal that they desperately want is often buried deep in the skip. As a result, they will remove all other waste to get to it but they won’t put the waste they removed back in the skip and that leaves you with a mess to clean up when you find it in the morning.

What’s more, they might even remove large items such as wood, old kitchen sinks and all other items and that means that they might cause damage to vehicles that are parked near to your skip. Of course, they won’t tell you that they have damaged your car because they don’t want you to know that they are there.

Furthermore, they might take it as an opportunity to dispose of their own waste such as large items that take up valuable space but they might also dispose of restricted items which means that you might be hit with an additional fee. One single tyre can cost as much as £35 + VAT, proving just how scrap thieves can cost you money in other ways.

So, it might be time to think about limiting access to your skip or placing it somewhere that has better light or can be seen easily. This will reduce the chances of scrap thieves costing you money and damage.