New environmental rules mean Devon residents can only dispose of upholstered furniture at selected recycling centres.
From December 1, only eight of Devon's Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs) will have the facilities to accept this type of waste.
The changes are due to new requirements from the Environment Agency, which demand HWRCs have segregated facilities for Waste Upholstered Domestic Seating (WUDS).
These include sofas, sofa beds, armchairs, recliner chairs, upholstered kitchen and dining room chairs, upholstered garden furniture, stools, footstools, office chairs, futons, bean bags, and floor and sofa cushions.
These items contain large amounts of persistent organic pollutants (POPs), often used as fire retardants.
These chemicals can accumulate in the environment and the fatty tissues of humans and wildlife, posing potential health and environmental risks.
To address this, all WUDS must be incinerated separately to destroy the harmful chemicals.
Devon County Council is now required by the Environment Agency to ensure all WUDS are segregated and transported separately from other waste.
This will necessitate additional containers and facilities at HWRCs.
However, due to space constraints, only a limited number of sites in Devon will be able to accept WUDS.
The HWRCs that will be able to accept WUDS from December 1 are Knowle Hill in Exmouth, Pinbrook Road in Exeter, Ashley in Tiverton, Seven Brethren in Barnstaple, Bideford, Ivybridge, Okehampton, and Brunel Road in Newton Abbot.
The WUDS will not be accepted at any other Devon HWRC after December 1.
Residents must ensure they take their WUDS to a site that can accept them or book a bulky collection with their district council, which will charge for the service.
Councillor Roger Croad, Devon County Council’s 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."
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