Changes are being made to how you dispose of upholstered furniture

From 1 December, only one recycling centre in the South Hams will be able to accept upholstered furniture. 

New environmental requirements will mean that from Sunday, 1 December, South Hams residents will only be able to dispose of their upholstered furniture at one of Devon County Council's "specially designated Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs)".

It follows the introduction of new requirements from the Environment Agency which require recycling centres to have segregated facilities to handle Waste Upholstered Domestic Seating (WUDS).

WUDS include sofas, sofa beds, armchairs, recliner chairs, upholstered kitchen and dining room chairs, upholstered garden furniture, stools and foot stools, office chairs, futons, bean bags, floor and sofa cushions.

These items contain large quantities of Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs or forever chemicals) and other hazardous chemicals in the textiles and foam.

These chemicals are often used as fire retardants; they persist in the environment, can accumulate in human and wildlife fatty tissues and can be harmful to health and the environment. All WUDS need to be sent for incineration separately where these chemicals are destroyed.

A spokesperson for Devon County Council said: "We are now required by the Environment Agency to ensure that all WUDS are segregated and transported separately from other waste.  

"This segregation will require additional containers and facilities to be provided at HWRCs. However, due to space constraints, only a limited number of sites in Devon will be able to accept WUDS.

"This means that the majority of our recycling centres will not have the facilities to accept these items."

The HWRCs that will be able to accept Waste Upholstered Domestic Seating from Sunday December 1 2024 are: 

• South Hams; Ivybridge
• East Devon; Knowle Hill in Exmouth
• Exeter; Pinbrook Road
• Mid Devon; Ashley, Tiverton
• North Devon; Seven Brethren, Barnstaple
• Torridge; Bideford
• West Devon; Okehampton
• Teignbridge; Brunel Road, Newton Abbot

WUDS cannot be accepted at any other Devon HWRC after December 1 and residents "will need to ensure that they take their WUDS to a site that can accept them or book a bulky collection with their district council who will charge for the service".

Councillor Roger Croad, Cabinet Member for Public Health, Communities and Equality

Councillor Roger Croad, our Cabinet Member responsible for waste services said: "The Environment Agency require that waste upholstered furniture is incinerated in order to safely destroy the POPs/forever chemicals contained within them.

"We have been successfully doing this for some time, but they are now requiring that we provide separate skips and collect and transport this waste separately from other residual waste streams despite it all going to the same Energy from Waste plant for incineration.

"Many of our HWRCs are simply too small to accommodate additional large containers without impacting on other recycling services.  As such, we can only provide one WUDS accepting recycling centre in each district council area and regretfully this will mean that residents may have to travel further to discard their items."