What actually happens to your rubbish after we take it

It goes to a transfer station, not straight to landfill

A mixed van load is taken to a licensed waste transfer station, where it is tipped and sorted. Timber, metal, cardboard, plastics and inert material like rubble are separated out into streams that go for recycling or recovery. What genuinely cannot be recovered goes for disposal.

The load is weighed in, and the carrier pays by the tonne. That weight ticket is the reason weight affects what you were quoted, and it is the paper trail that shows the waste went somewhere legitimate.

Some things cannot go in the mixed load

Several categories have to be kept separate, by law rather than by preference:

• Fridges and freezers — the refrigerant gases have to be removed at a licensed facility before the unit is broken up
• Upholstered seating — must be incinerated rather than recycled, under the POPs rules
• Electricals — handled under the WEEE regulations, which require them to be recorded and treated separately
• Plasterboard — has to be kept apart from biodegradable waste, so it is a separate stream
• Batteries, paint, chemicals, gas bottles and asbestos — hazardous waste, with its own rules and carriers

Why we ask what is in the load

The questions about what you have are not an attempt to inflate the price. A fridge in a load that was priced as general waste means a separate journey to a different facility, and asbestos discovered mid-job stops the job entirely.

Telling us up front is always cheaper than us finding out on the day.

If you think there may be asbestos — common in garage roofs, old artex, floor tiles and pipe lagging in properties built before 2000 — do not move it or break it up. It needs a licensed specialist, and we will say so rather than take it.

What you are entitled to ask for

You can ask any carrier for a waste transfer note describing what was collected and where it went. For a household clearance this is often a receipt rather than a formal document, but the information should be available.

You can also ask what proportion of loads is recycled. Anyone claiming a hundred per cent is overstating it — some material genuinely cannot be recovered — and a straight answer is a better sign than a perfect one.