The Skip Magazine

You know the increasing need to consider the environment, right? Well, it got me thinking (doesn’t happen often, but it gets me through the ad breaks when I don’t have a Pot Noodle to tend to) while we indulge in the sheer delight of all these gloriously overloaded skips, are we missing an altogether more important issue – underloaded skips?

I was on a bus into Manchester after a long lunch yesterday afternoon (I left the car at The Red Lion - for the sake of the environment, of course), when I saw a typical 8 yard builder’s skip being collected from the road outside a house refurb. From my vantage point upstairs, desperately clinging to the bars of the swaying seat in front, I was able to peer down at the contents of the skip. I was amazed - but for all the wrong reasons. Barely covering the base of the skip, I saw about a dozen broken paving slabs, a couple of paint cans, the obligatory newspaper and what looked like a discarded kebab (hence the kebab I immediately purchased when I arrived at my destination). And let’s face it, I was p***** again so there may only have been half the amount of stuff I actually thought I saw through that sweaty bus window!

My point is this; even without considering the extra cost of hiring an overly-large skip these days, it’s surely just plain wrong to go hiring a skip that ends up being barely half-filled? To get incisively environmentalist about it, there’s still the same pollution caused by the truck that drops and collects it... the same sliver of tree used for the paperwork... the same drain on the National Grid when the customer makes a brew for the driver, and so on (that’s an unwritten law, by the way, so make sure you’re getting your collection brew or you’ll just be furthering the problem by stopping off for drinks that come in disposable containers - make sure the customer understands that they are helping the environment by furnishing you with your beverage of choice).

A handful of paving slabs can cripple a car, so I’m not suggesting that a skip was unnecessary in this case, but a bit of homework and basic ‘guestimation’ would probably have saved the customer some money, and the environment some abuse.

One way of reducing this kind of wasteful, over-sized skip ordering is to provide customers with a guide to what kind of skip they should order for the job at hand - the TopSkips web site does this job very well, whilst also giving the customer some reassurance that they are dealing with a company who wants to meet their needs, rather than push the most expensive option.

Here’s another idea I had (that’s two in one month - I’ll be on “The Apprentice” soon, I reckon). It’s a bit radical as it involves people actually making contact with their neighbours, but I’ll throw it out there anyway...

It’s basically the opposite of ‘skip-jacking’ (when you hire a nice empty skip, and then find that one of your lovely neighbours plucked up the Stella-fuelled, midnight courage to fill it with their entire life’s possessions). What if there was a scheme to encourage ‘skip-sharing’? A special deal could be offered to neighbours who book a shared skip - gaining new business from people who wouldn’t consider ordering a skip for their amount of waste alone, but might take advantage of an opportunity to share the cost with a neighbour. A simple leaflet drop could inform a whole street of the opportunity to get rid of their waste at an affordable price, as well as outlining the environmental benefits of skip-sharing (not to mention the fact that it might even go some way to reviving a sense of ‘community’). Your business gets to promote its environmental commitment, skip hire becomes affordable to people who would otherwise feel out-priced, and skip-jacking/fly-tipping could even be reduced.

Is it a rubbish idea? (That’s the oldest pun in the industry, so believe me when I say it’s not intended.) Let me know what you think anyway - it could be completely unworkable as you will know better than me.

If you’ve made it this far through my ramblings, you may well be thinking “Get on with it, man, you’ve made your point!” (In fact, you’re probably thinking something far more unprintable, as even I’m thinking that!) So, not wanting to disappoint those of you who share my ultimate passion, below is an overloaded skip from Centro Waste Skip Hire in Birmingham. It reminds me of a party I went to recently, where the ‘buffet’ was basically some breadsticks and cheese straws crammed into an undersized glass (which was appropriate, as the girl who’s party it was looked surprisingly similar in her outfit - it’s okay, she’s too busy lying to her ‘friends’ on Facebook to be reading The Skip).

So, let me know your thoughts on skip-sharing, keep those overloaded gems coming, and snap any outrageously underloaded skips you pick up. I’m going to start keeping a tally of which is more rife (unless someone can suggest a better reason for my life) As usual, email pr@theskip.net or post them to - The Skip, Baxall Business Centre, Adswood Road,Stockport, SK3 8LF.

I got dragged along to an Ambassador’s reception recently, as you do when you work in the waste industry. It was pretty boring, to tell you the truth, so I whipped out some of my ‘special interest’ Polaroids that I carry discretely in my top pocket and started showing them around to spice things up a bit. They soon became the focus of the whole evening and, at one point, the Ambassador was actually heard to say “Monsieur, with these tremendously overloaded skip photographs you are spoiling us!” (What? You didn’t think I’d pull out those photos did you!)

So, you see, your fantastic overloaded skip photos are not merely serving the purpose of giving us all a good chuckle each month. They are actually a vital tool in my quest for social acceptance. In fact, they may well have saved my life too, for all I know, when some skinheads tried to mug me at a railway station in south London last February. I was pinned against a fence by two of them, while the third mugger went through my pockets. Luckily, the first thing the little scally found was one of my aforementioned Polaroid collections, and they were all so busy laughing at them that I managed to slip their clutches and do a runner amid the distraction. The loss of some particularly exquisite pictures did take me a while to come to terms with, but I managed to retain all my body parts, so it was a fair trade-off in the end.

Anyway, let’s have a good look at these latest fine specimens to be added to
the collection. The skip above was sent to us by D K Rowe Skip Hire, of London. It’s another victim of pruning madness and is definitely in need of an extreme hair cut before it stands much chance of going anywhere.

Here we have an artfully overpiled collection of household fittings and rubble that was snapped by Sam at Dunmow Skips Ltd. And yes, it’s even got the kitchen sink in there!

My favourite overloaded skip fix this month, however, comes courtesy of Triple C Skips, of Accrington. It’s positively haemorrhaging lounge furniture in all directions! You can bet that the inevitable sofas teetering on the top were not dumped in there by the person who actually hired the skip too (I think that’s pretty much an unwritten rule, nowadays isn’t it?)

Right, I’m off to a speed dating evening now - where the pictures never fail to make an instant impression. Please help me to continue having a social life by sending more great overloaded skip pics to pr@theskip.net or post them to - The Skip, Baxall Business Centre, Adswood Road, Stockport, SK3 8LF.

The Art of Skipouflage

Human behaviour is about as predictable as the likelihood that Euro 2008 will provide little in the way of excitement for any English-speaking nations. The minute there’s a sniff of good weather in the UK & Ireland, the shorts and barbecues come flying out... along with the skips. We love all three!

Yes, it’s that time of year again when ‘a bit of pruning’ in the garden can quickly become a devastating scene of conifer carnage. This often has something to do with the genius idea of opening a couple of tinnies to accompany the thirsty work and getting just a little bit overzealous with the shears. It’s all good news for skip hire companies though, of course. And equally great news for people like myself who have developed a trainspotter-like compulsion for gawping at overloaded skips.

All these beauties were sent in to The Skip by TRS Ltd of Merstham, Surrey. The skills employed in loading these up, make me think some people may have missed their calling in life - applying this ability to camouflaging army tanks would make a good career!

They’re all cracking examples, but the one below is an absolute belter - you have to look really hard to see the skip at all under that ridiculous stack of garden waste.

So don’t be too down if your team isn’t in the Euros this month. Get yourself out there with a camera and play a game we can all win - overloaded skip spotting!

Snap skips while the sun shines. Email your bulging skip pics to pr@theskip.net or post them to -
The Skip, Baxall Business Centre, Adswood Road, Stockport, SK3 8LF.

It turns out that America isn’t all just homicides and j-walking; after I’d finished laughing about Britney Spears crashing her Mercedes whilst putting on make up last month (hit me baby one more time!), I happened upon a heart-warming tale of human decency from our friends across the pond...

A solid waste transfer station inspector, working in Montgomery County, Maryland, received a call on his radio from the ‘trash bays’ in the public unloading area one morning, informing him that a member of the public had reported hearing a cat meowing in the number 13 trailer.

The inspector ordered the trailer to be pulled to the tipping floor inside the transfer station building, where it became the job of two unfortunate contractors to climb in and empty the entire trailer by hand.

After 35 minutes of sifting merrily through filth, no cat was found. With hopes of finding the kitten rapidly dwindling, the inspector received another call informing him that the cat was still meowing near trailer bay 13. The search was moved back to the trailer area, but still no moggy…

Feeling there was no more they could do, the men returned to work. But one determined animal lover refused to give up and kept on searching until he found the kitten hidden in the trailer bay. He has now given the kitten a home and named it ‘Lucky’! Aaaah, it makes you feel all warm inside... and then a bit pukey.

Speaking of fluffy felines; never mind the expression ‘not enough room to swing a cat’ - you couldn’t fit a cat in this month’s artfully overloaded skip if you passed it through a blender first (please don’t try this - trust me, it’s true).

This gem, sent in by TDB Morris Environmental Ltd, scores double points. It’s obligatory for any self-respecting overloaded skip to feature either a matress or an old sofa - but this has both!

Can anyone beat this for quality? Email your overloaded skip photos to pr@theskip.net or post them to - The Skip, Baxall Business Centre, Adswood Road, Stockport, SK3 8LF.

Here’s a particularly unusual overloaded skip story we heard this month: a Birmingham skip hire company have been fined because of a freakish incident in which a monsoon type downpour filled one of their skips with so much water that it exceeded it’s maximum permitted load weight!

The 7.5-tonne lorry, belonging to Need-A-Skip Ltd of Four Oaks, Sutton Coldfield, was carrying two skips when the unlikely storm struck - adding several inches of water to the load during transit.

The skip truck was legally loaded when the journey began, but the sheer volume of rainfall caused the load to be 410kg overweight by the time the driver was pulled over for a routine inspection off the M5 at Quinton.

The company had little choice but to admit responsibility for the offence at Solihull Magistrates Court where, fortunately, the unusual circumstances were taken into account. Because of this, the fine was kept down to £200 plus £209 costs.

As we all know, it’s hard enough trying to keep thoughtless neighbours from illegally overloading skips with their midnight fly-tipping antics, so being slapped with a fine for what is generally described as an ‘act of God’ is quite a harsh blow!

Fortunately for us, there’s still plenty of more traditionally overloaded skips knocking about out there for our amusement. The above picture comes complete with the lovely finishing touch of a couple of paint tubs, optimistically placed in the vicinity of the skip and the bin - in the hope that somebody will deal with them...

This skip, spotted by Helen Roberts in Copley, is so overloaded with garden waste, it appears to have morphed into an existing tree, making it difficult to tell where the skip ends and the garden begins! (Or is it just one of those rare ‘skip trees’
in full bloom?)

Please keep your overloaded skip photos coming. Email them to pr@theskip.net or you can post them to - The Skip, Baxall Business Centre, Adswood Road, Stockport, SK3 8LF.

I’ve been pondering the recent discussion taking place on our web site about the possibility of traffic wardens issuing fines to law-breaking skips (View skip hire discussion)! I started wondering where it might lead - it’d be pretty hard to clamp a skip, so if the fine was ignored would they tow it away for you? If they then impounded it, wouldn’t they need a waste management license to store it??

Anyway, enough pondering. This month’s cracking pair of overloaded skips come courtesy of Carr & Bircher in Saffron Walden. The delightful contrast between the two pictures made me wonder (which is not technically ‘pondering’) what a nature expert might have to say about them. So, it’s time for...

WHAT WOULD DAVID ATTENBOROUGH SAY?

“The chameleon skip really is a remarkable species. Take these two pictures here, for example. You can see quite clearly from the markings on the shell of the creature that it is in fact the same animal. And yet, when placed in a different environment, it has an incredible ability to blend in by adapting the appearance of it’s upper body. In the first picture, we see cold, clean industrial lines when the skip becomes cornered within a building. Then, when the skip is back outdoors, it reverts it’s bodily form to reflect the green, luscious surroundings of it’s natural habitat. Absolutely wonderful.”

Please keep your overloaded skip photos coming. Email them through or post them to - The Skip, Baxall Business Centre, Adswood Road, Stockport, SK3 8LF.

Get the hankies out, folks - former guardian of this column, Branston Cowdell, has sadly left us to travel this vast globe in search of ‘himself’ (we bought him a nice mirror as a leaving present, but apparently this didn’t help). We had a fitting party here at the office to see him off though - ‘overloaded’ cocktails, ‘dumpster diving' sandwiches, scantily clad skip chicks... all his old faves.

But fear not, bulging waste fans - Skip Watch lives on and it seems the world is still rife with overloaded skips. Your snaps continue to be the source of many a giggle here at The Skip - please do keep them coming.

The first photo, above, is one I spotted myself in the car park of a Tameside pub (I was there strictly for business reasons, of course). It was such a work of art that it could almost have been mistaken for one of Kevin Harman’s sculptures (as featured in this very edition of "The Skip"). The subtle use of doors as ‘greedy boards’ was holding in a colourful array of waste, nestling snugly beneath a couple of cosy duvets, all topped off beautifully with an upturned wheelbarrow to finish. A few more beers, and I might have been tempted to crawl in for a snooze.

However, I’ve rarely seen such an extravagant example of ‘greedy boarding’ as this month’s winning picture, which comes courtesy of Des from Doncaster. Thanks Des - it’s simply a-door-able!

Can you beat it? Get snapping those overloaded skips while you’re out and about. Email your entries through to at us

or post them to -

The Skip Magazine
Unit 5 Baxall Business Centre
Adswood Road
Stockport
SK3 8LF

Last month ‘skip reporting’ went high-brow following a feature in The Observer’s weekly magazine (‘Those Big Yellow Crates Bring a Street Out to Play’ – July 1st).

As much as it enthused me to see such a fervour for skip facts within the article, my anal side couldn’t help but hunt for the nonsense.

For starters it claimed that the lowest priced skip in the UK was £65, whereas I know that skips start from as little as £50 in northern town like Oldham and Rochdale. Secondly it seemed to revel in made-up phrases like ‘New Navvies’ (people who deliver and pick up skips – supposedly), ‘skippery’ (items in skips) and ‘skip-fiends’ (‘skippies’ who illegally dump waste!).

Maybe I‘m just bitter because they didn’t ask me for some input! Either way, I have to admit it gladdened me to see such an article. Bravo, The Observer! - But next time give me a call!

Now onto the over-loaded skip photos I’ve received this month. The first comes courtesy of Darren from Salford Skips. The alley in the background looks remarkably like the back alley from the opening shots of Coronation Street and the skip itself looks like it’s about to give up the ghost. By my reckoning there’s enough waste in it to fill three skips, never mind two!

The next photo (and this week’s winner - by a whisker) was sent in by Shorts Skips from Ascot, Berkshire. This one uses the classic ‘fencing’ technique to pen the additional rubbish in. There’s something beautiful about the planning that’s gone into maximising the skip space, but did the customer really think in their heart of hearts that anyone would pick up such a monstrously over-filled skip?

I’ve been sent some real bloaters over the past few months but if you feel you can do better, take a photo of the next ‘mountainous’ skip you see and email your entries through to

post them to – Skip Watch, The Skip, Baxall Business Centre, Adswood Road, Stockport, SK3 8LF.