DIY Waste: Everything You Need To Know

The new DIY Waste legislation.

In June, The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced that households will no longer have to pay to dispose of DIY waste at Household Waste Recycling Centres.

Two days ago (22nd November), Parliament announced that these changes would come into effect on December 31st, 2023.

These changes will apply to HWRCs across England and Wales, and you can read the Statutory Instrument here.

What does this mean for local authorities?

In short, this means that DIY waste should now be treated as household waste when it meets the following four conditions:

1. The waste is produced at a domestic property by the occupiers who are carrying out their own construction or demolition works.
2. The waste does not arise from activities that generate an income for the person who carried out the construction or demolition works.
3. The waste is not produced so frequently that more than four visits per household are required over a four-week period.
4. The quantity of waste per visit is, at most, two 50L bags or a single item of waste no larger than 2000mm x 750mm x 700mm.

How will authorities manage & enforce this?

In preparation for this, we've worked with stakeholders from over 70 HWRCs to build a new DIY Waste Booking Module that is designed to help authorities: 

• Seamlessly manage the legislation change 
• Improve reporting on waste streams & individual usage
• Reduce service misuse 
• Recoup losses through cost reduction & revenue generation
• Improve recycling rates
• Deliver a better on-site experience with a purpose-built check-in app
• Reduce fly-tipping
• Streamline comms between site & admin staff
• Better inform residents with (automated) two-way comms channels

Here's how:  

1: By stopping service misuse.

This module includes a suite of automated rules that can:

• Limit residents to two 50L rubble sacks per week, one bulky item, or your chosen equivalent
• Cap usage at four visits per month
• Reduce out-of-borough tipping with address lookup

 2: By improving comms & reducing emissions. 

With this additional functionality, you can generate automated comms & web journey prompts informing users they have hit disposal limits to stop wasted journeys & reduce carbon emission outputs. 

3: By improving reporting.

You'll get detailed reports on the frequency, amount & type of DIY waste disposed of per household. See top users by waste stream, revenues, & much more.

4: By providing dynamic visit durations.

With this module, duration options will update dynamically based on the type/volume of waste a user selects. This is to encourage users to visit less frequently but with more waste.

Note:

This module is included (as standard) in our GovBook Gold | HWRC Booking Service. 

You can learn more about our HWRC Booking Service here.

Join 90+ Recycling & Waste Management professionals for a free DIY Waste webinar.

On the 30th of November, we'll be joined by over 90 Recycling & Waste Management professionals for an industry-shaping webinar where we'll be discussing:  

• What the new DIY Waste legislation means for authorities  
• How the community plans to deal with these changes  
• Potential ways to regulate & better manage waste types  
• How other authorities will offset the loss in revenue 
• Blockers to delivering efficient solutions &
• Our new DIY Waste Module

This will be a fantastic opportunity to learn, share ideas, and find a workable solution to overcome the challenge of DIY Waste.

To learn more, click here.