Skipping Safely: 5 Safety Tips for Skip Bin Hire

If you are hiring a skip bin, there are a few safety rules you should consider. In order to ensure neither you, your employees or anyone else near your skip bin sustains an injury, check out these safety tips:

1. Hire a skip bin with a door

Skip bins often come with doors on the side. These doors make it easy to load large heavy items like couches or dressers, and carrying in these items is much easier on your back and body than trying to hoist them over the high side of a skip.

Many of these doors open toward the ground, allowing you to use them as ramps. Only use skip doors that are designed to be used as ramps. Do not use planks as ramps. They can easily buckle and fail under the weight of a person and a wheelbarrow full of trash.

2. Load the skip evenly

Try to load the skip as evenly as possible. Slight variances in weight are no problem, but you don't want heavy furniture on one side of the skip and packing foam on the other. An unevenly packed skip could tip the truck after pick up and hurt the driver, or it could even fall over while you have it.

3. Do not smash rubbish with your body

If you need to fit more rubbish into the skip, do not crush the rubbish in it with your legs and feet. Any glass or sharp objects could easily cut you as you try to stomp the rubbish, and even if you know that you haven't put anything sharp in your skip bin, you have no idea what someone else may have dropped in it while walking by.

4. Do not allow others to dig through your rubbish

Stealing garbage is illegal, and ideally, people should not dig through your rubbish. Do not allow anyone to dig in it. Unfortunately, if they were hurt while in the bin, you may be held liable for their injuries. To reduce temptation, don't fill your skip with anything worthwhile. Try to recycle or give away anything that could be used.

5. Comply with environmental regulations

Complying with environmental regulations keeps you safe because it means you are not hauling hazardous materials such as asbestos-filled flooring to your skip bin, but it also protects you legally. Unfortunately, if you throw things like paint thinner, gas bottles or other banned substances in your skip, you could be fined. Check with your council or the skip bin hire company you're using for the list of items that cannot be sent to the landfill. In most cases, you can recycle those things for free.  

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