By Suzana Mikolova 
So you’ve decided to pull out that old tired bathroom, install a new gourmet kitchen or put in that swimming pool that your kids have been asking for the last two years?
No doubt you have thought of the major items:
The materials you will need to buy;
The tradesmen you will need to employ;
The equipment you may need to hire
You probably have a ball park figure of how much each of these components is going to cost you and may have factored in a percentage for contingency. But have you thought of how you are going to get rid of all the old materials that you are removing? This can be significant ane while it may not sound like the most interesting area to spend money on, and indeed there is little satisfaction to be gained by seeing a full skip bin full of your old kitchen disappearing into the sunset – until that is, you consider what you could have bought with the money that it is costing you to dispose of the materials.
If you take the time to get an understanding of how things are disposed of though, you might well save a substantial sum:
First, you need to estimate the quantities of different materials being removed.
Bricks and concrete can often be disposed of cheaply as they are recyclable if clean of contaminants. If you have at least 2 cubic metres of either of these you many find a very cheap skip bin to dispose of these materials. You many even be able to take them to a concrete crusher (recycler) who will take them off you for a low rate. Ask first as some recyclers can take these materials together whereas others need them to be separated.
Soil can sometimes be disposed of more cheaply than mixed materials depending on how it is treated in your area. There are often restrictions on this, such as a requirement for the soil to be virgin excavated material (not to contain any foreign objects).
General waste which will be all the packaging, old cabinet work, gyprock and odds and ends will be often disposed of at a tonnage rate. These are relatively light materials and should be fairly cheap to get rid of UNLESS you mix in heavy items such as concrete, bricks, soil and tiles. If you do the, these items will not be recyclable since they will be “contaminated” and the general waste will not be cheap to dispose of since it will be ‘weighed down” by the heavy materials.
There are some cases where a skip bin supplier will sort through all their loads and in such cases they are often able to offer flat prices no mater what the load is made of. Ask your skip bin supplier about this before booking.
Another area where your waste disposal can become more expensive is if you keep the skip bin onsite for extended periods of time. Normally when you hire a skip bin, you get between 4 days and a week included in the price. If you keep it longer, there is often a daily or weekly rental charge applied. For this reason it is often better if you can corral the waste in a weldmesh pen until you are ready to get rid of all of it.
Good prices can be obtained online for skip bins and many companies can advise your of the best way to plan the waste removal for your project if you outline all your plans to them.
The information in this article is most relevant to Australia.