Garbage day – depending on who (and where) you are, the thought could elicit excitement or dread. Maybe it only sparks ambivalence – either way, it’s hard to deny that it does cause a bit of a stir in our neighborhoods. There are a lot of rules surrounding the normal rubbish pickup schedule that we have to be aware of.
The biggest example of that is in regard to what we can actually toss out in our normal bins in the first place. Admittedly, it’s probably not something that we think about all that often. With that said, there are a surprising number of restrictions on what we can throw out and what we should have taken by a specialist team.
A lot of us really aren’t sure what sorts of things we can throw out versus recycle, for example. You can find examples of that on this page, but there’s a good chance you probably don’t want to have to consult with a site like that every time you’re curious.
Are there really alternatives, though? At first glance, it probably seems like there really aren’t. However, once you start to dig into it a bit more, you can find that there are a plethora if you look in the right spots. Namely, there are other rubbish disposal services available, which we’ll be covering today for anyone who’s interested in it!
What Can We Consider “Rubbish”?
Our first order of business here today is to define “rubbish,” specifically for our purposes here. After all, obviously there are a ton of different types of trash and garbage, but what sorts of stuff might need to be picked up by a company separate from your typical garbage company? There are actually several places that list these rules out.
That, naturally, does include the resource we linked above. With that said, though, we’d like to explain some of the intricacies here. For the most part, anything that could be considered a hazardous material or that could be thought of as exceedingly difficult to remove is prohibited from the normal weekly services.
Medical waste or other potentially toxic materials have to be bagged and disposed of appropriately, and it can lead to issues with the regular trash disposal teams. To be safe, it can often be a good idea to bring in an external company to deal with that sort of thing. Beyond that, though, there’s also the matter of furniture to contend with.
Naturally, that’s what most folks think about when considering rubbish that we can’t toss out with our regular trash. This isn’t an assumption that’s incorrect, of course, but as we’ve discussed it doesn’t capture the full picture. That said, it’s obviously true that we can’t just put a bed frame outside in the yard and expect it to be taken out.
This goes for any big appliance like refrigerators, washers, driers, or anything similar – when you have to get rid of them, it’s pretty important to bring in an external service. You can read about some of them here, ridly.com.au, but we’ll be getting into detail about how the specifics of the removal services will work out. The gist of it, for now at least, is that there are a lot of rules surrounding rubbish pickup and often it’s easier to get rid of things in bulk instead.
What is a Rubbish Disposal Service?
To specify, when we discuss this here, we’ll refer to external services you can hire. As we’ve noted above, There are many of them around in Sydney and the surrounding suburbs. What makes them distinct from the typical service, though?
Perhaps the biggest difference is the types of junk that they can remove. To a certain extent, it will depend on how you want to handle it in terms of your initial consultation with the company. We’ll explain how that might work in the next section, so for now, just keep that in the back of your mind.
Furniture is the primary type of junk that will get removed by these companies since that’s a pain point for the normal pickup schedule. As you can probably guess, it’s far from the only thing that can be grabbed. Any junk you want removed can technically be taken, which is nice in the context of wanting to remove as much at once as possible.
How Does it Work?
How Does it Work?When we decide to hire a company like this, what does the process look like? The first thing that you’ll probably want to do is have a proper consultation. Obviously, this might vary depending on what you have to toss out and the like. For instance, if you have several large trash bags, it may be prudent to label them or denote them as things for the workers to remove.
The same goes for furniture pieces, of course. Some services will expect you to have them places outside for easy removal, while others are happy to help you get them out of the house as well. It will largely depend on who you decide to work with and whether or not you feel comfortable taking those pieces out on your own.
Once you get through the consultation stage and sort out a price – which will vary, of course, and ideally, you’ll get that figured out quite early on – you may have a few other things to take care of before they come to perform the service. There may or may not be a deposit involved based on how much you’re having removed. After that, though, it’s pretty simple.
They’ll arrive on the arranged date and time and remove what you asked to have taken out. Depending on what you decide to toss, there will probably be some recycling and repurposing of those items, meaning that you don’t necessarily have to stress about everything getting tossed into a landfill.
Are these Services Worth it? Are there Downsides?
The final big questions that we would like to address today are whether it’s worth hiring a service like this, and if there are any real negatives to it. The first “downside” that comes to mind is of course that it costs money. While there are definitely affordable options, it’s hard to justify not including that in a list of cons.
Another worry that many folks have is that their items will join the junk piles in landfills or something like that, but if you find a good rubbish disposal company, they’ll likely look for other ways to dispose of trash first. Whether that’s recycling things like plastic or metal scraps or refurbishing furniture and distributing it to community members in need, there are other options available.
In that sense, it’s easy to see why so many folks opt for a service like this, especially as we near the springtime and the time when we all start to get itchy to do some more cleaning. Now, we can do so with confidence, not needing to worry about our garbage not being picked up or taken away – we can go with the alternatives instead!
Thus, for the most part, the positives certainly outweigh any negatives. Something that helps in this regard is the fact that the prices aren’t all that expensive in the first place. When you can have big appliances taken out of your hair for under a hundred AUD, it’s not all that hard to justify considering how much of a pain it can be to deal with on our own.
Hopefully, you can walk away from this article with a bit of a better understanding of how this process works, and whether or not you want to bring in an outside rubbish removal service!
