A council has apologised to residents after a suspension on disposing domestic seating waste at its recycling centres was lifted. 

Any upholstered seating such as sofas, chairs and cushions were not able to be disposed at Cambridgeshire County Council’s nine recycling centres from January 1.

But the council has found an interim solution for accepting these and other related items at the centres, which will allow bulky waste collections offered by the county’s city and district councils to resume. 

Steve Cox, Cambridgeshire’s executive director of place and sustainability, said the council did not “underestimate the concerns” that the suspension would have on residents. 

“We would like to apologise to them for that and thank them for their patience and understanding,” he said. 

“Changes to the way we are allowed to safely dispose of these items meant we were given an extremely short timeframe to deal with waste that could no longer be put into landfill.” 

The suspension came after the county council was given until December 31 by the Environment Agency (EA) to comply with laws on disposing waste containing persistent organic pollutants (POPs).  

This legislation requires any POPs waste to be incinerated and not landfilled, including any non-POPs waste that may have come into contact with it and may be contaminated.    

Cambridgeshire County Council uses landfill sites to dispose waste that cannot be recycled. 

Mr Cox said Cambridgeshire County Council does not often use incineration for disposing waste, but it did not have “an easy or immediate solution to hand”. 

Cambridgeshire had raised concerns about disposing domestic seating waste with DEFRA and the EA in the autumn on finding compliant operators to deal with the waste. 

A county council spokesperson said operators were not willing to enter into agreements until final guidance, which confirmed upholstered domestic seating waste affected by POPs was suspended, was published by the EA on December 19 last year. 

Councillor Lorna Dupre, chair of the county council’s environment and green investment committee, said: “We now have safe and compliant temporary solutions.

"[This will] allow us to continue to accept this waste until we are able to dispose of it safely by incineration.” 

All nine recycling centres will accept upholstered domestic seating waste from January 7.