Is asking a Skip company for Wooden desks from a school agains the law?

Tigress

A school has skipped fantastic old Wooden desks that are perfect for reuse. The school said yes take them but the skip company has removed. The skip company says once it is theirs its illegal for them to allow people to scavange?

Is this true?

Judgement Day

Absolute tripe - they are just giving you the brush off as they don't want to be bothered by you.

mikep

Tigress...unfortunately the skip company are probably restricted by the waste management act and have a responsibility to ensure the waste (desks in this case) is disposed of by someone with a permit/licence to do so...

Pity the school had never heard of jumbletown...would have saved 'em money too...

hick

From a legal standpoint, it is not the skip company you have to ask, they are contracted and mandated then from a legal perspective to carry out the disposal.

The entity that had to be asked for and the only one that could give permission to remove them from the skip is the school

Judgement Day

Nope, it's just another case of red tape and bull**** being used as an excuse for being awkward.

hick

eh no... it's a legal ruling that prevents people from being accused of stealing

Judgement Day

No - it's just a matter of being flexible. A quick phone call - if really necessary - to the school by the skip company could easily sort the situation. Where there's a will there's a way. More than my job's worth rules the roost in Ireland!

dahak

Tigress wrote: »

A school has skipped fantastic old Wooden desks that are perfect for reuse. The school said yes take them but the skip company has removed. The skip company says once it is theirs its illegal for them to allow people to scavange?

Is this true?

It's not exactly clear from the post but the bit that I've bolded looks to be important. If the skip company has already removed the skip from the site then, to the best of my knowledge, it would be a waste permit problem (among others). Once material enters that chain of custody then it has to be accounted and anyone receiving it should have the correct permits.

It does produces a lot of red tape but those rules are there to prevent problems with illegal dumping (like the Roadstone site in Wicklow a few years ago).

There's also the public liability problem of people going through 'waste' on the skip company site.

zagmund

Once the skip company has picked up then they are responsible for disposal. If they were to allow people on to their sites (or trucks) to sort through the stuff they would open up huge problems for themselves . . . practiaclly it's just not going to happen short of special cases like someone indicating they dropped a few million in the skip by mistake.

If the skip is still on school property then it's probably slightly different - it may be slightly nebulous but I can't see a problem (apart from public liability, etc . . .) with the school giving approval to remove stuff from the skip while it is still at the school. The skip company doesn't need to know anything.

Per the original post it appears that the skip had already been lifted, so the company would be well within their rights not to entertain any discussion about reclaiming stuff.

z

Judgement Day

It's a fairly pointless thread really. After years of dealing with 'job's worths' and the like, money talks. Offer somebody a few quid and you'll have your desks - use your initiative! Something else that's missing in modern Ireland.

frodos63

Permits is the problem. The place I work someone ask for a few cardboard boxes for packing as he was moving house. Was told no as he did not have a waste permit so he could not remove anything from the waste stream

Judgement Day

Just underlines what I said in a previous post - too much red tape and bull**** bedevils this country.

djpbarry

Judgement Day wrote: »

After years of dealing with 'job's worths' and the like, money talks. Offer somebody a few quid and you'll have your desks - use your initiative! Something else that's missing in modern Ireland.

You seem to be confusing 'initiative' with bribery.

Judgement Day

I was simply suggesting offering somebody a few quid - be it a member of staff or the manager or the school - just try using one's initiative before coming on here crying about it. Anyway I have found that bribery works wonders.

dahak

Judgement Day wrote: »

It's a fairly pointless thread really. After years of dealing with 'job's worths' and the like, money talks. Offer somebody a few quid and you'll have your desks - use your initiative! Something else that's missing in modern Ireland.

That's not very fair really. The OP asked:

Tigress wrote: »

The skip company says once it is theirs its illegal for them to allow people to scavange?

Is this true?

Your response was that it isn't true and that the skip company was trying to brush the poster off. Other posters, including myself, have pointed out that the skip company was in fact telling the truth. Once material has entered the waste stream, the skip company can't allow it to go to someone without correct waste permits.

So as for answering the OP's question I don't think that this tread is pointless at all.

With regard to the secondary points that have been brought up about red tape and 'job's worths' ruining the country. For practically any rules and procedures it's possible to find corner (and not so corner) cases where the rules look completely over the top and stupid. For the most part I agree with the strict controls on waste and waste companies in Ireland. For way too long, large and not so large companies were basically doing what they liked with regard to waste. There were some laws there but they had practically no teeth until the EPA was set up.

You're right about money talking, before a lot of the 'red tape' was fully enforced it was substantially cheaper for a company to not be responsible about their waste stream. Even if they got caught fines were low and prosecutions fairly uncommon. Now with stricter enforcement and harsh fines there's a lot less of the waste stream 'disappearing'.

Can these laws and 'red tape' have some unfortunate side effects, yes it can, but for the most part I think they have improved the situation with regards to waste in Ireland.

meathstevie

Reuse,reduce, recycle...yeah that's right. Pay some organisation a lock of money for a fancy sticker and of to the dump with it...

If that waste stream stuff was to be true than every time I've done my shopping in a supermarket and I've asked the staff if I could lift a couple of empty fruit boxes to put my stuff in they've been wrong to say "go ahead".

What happened to common sence in this country ?

Take the example of the cardboard boxes. I transport my shopping in it while saving the supermarket money on waste disposal and are used twice instead of once. The boxes gets torn up to light my solid fuel central heating that hardly sees any other fuel but wood from fallen trees on local farms which I cut and chop myself. Doesn't get much better than that does it ? No coal or turf, no silly transport mileage and fuel from trees that would have started releasing carbon anyway since they're dead or dying.

Green Beaker

Just a point to note:
Where any material is suitable for direct reuse without undergoing any significant processing i.e. the desk being reused as a desk then there is a strong argument that it is not a waste material.

A new Waste Framework Directive was introduced in Nov 08 which reviewed the definition of waste and when incorporated into Irish Law (whenever that will be!!) should remove some of the "Bull" from the current waste legislation.:)