With the regulations changing on POPs, we reached out to the Environmental Agency to clarify what we should all look out for going forward in the future of recycling and reuse. Here is their response:

“Waste domestic seating is any item of seating of a household type from households or businesses that is waste. Domestic seating includes home office chairs and similar items from other sources.

In reference to office chairs from non-domestic sources:

• We anticipate that many will be indistinguishable from home office chairs in the waste chain, and so many waste contractors will manage them as similar items.
• Defra identified that commercial seating was also at high risk of containing POPs, and we intend to sample these when opportunity arises.
• Our understanding is that many upholstered office seats are manufactured to the same/similar flame retardancy, hence the likelihood of containing same/similar chemicals (we will be checking that). This is not least due to the proliferation of home working over the last decade.
• The holder of the waste has a Duty of Care to describe the waste accurately, including relevant chemical composition. If you don’t know if POPs are present, you should either find out or assume that they are on a precautionary basis.

So our advice would be that office chairs should be managed in the same manner, as precautionary POPs waste, unless the holder has discharged their duty of care and has sufficient information to demonstrate that they don’t contain POPs." - EA

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What does it all mean?

It means the cost of disposing of couches, office chairs, and other foam and fabric-based assets has now tripled. The new rules have an impact on how they are collected as well because POPs need to be separated from non-pop goods. 

Because the rules only apply when the owner of the object declares it to be waste, reuse is much more crucial. Hence, if you're clearing out an office full of obsolete chairs and sofas, the disposal cost is probably going to be substantial if they can't be donated or used again. Of course, if you work with TRACOuk, we make it our mission to manage these resources so that they aren't considered waste and that reuse comes first.

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