I agree Alan, there is so much waste that could be re-used and do someone a good turn. You would think that furniture could be retreated professionally with a fire deterrent and labelled accordingly. But I guess places like charity's aren't in the business of paying out for such things, they just want to check it conforms to regulations, get it in and sell it on.
We had the same problem a few years ago. We brought a new three piece suite and rather pay £30 to the local council to take our old one away, which meant just the regular weekly bin men slinging it in the back of the crusher we decided to donate it to charity. A win win situation as it got rid of it for free and would hopefully do a charity a good turn, or so we thought. Yep, you guessed it, good old health and safety reared it's ugly head, the charity shop didn't want to know because it didn't have any fire retardant information on it.
In the end we put it in a local free ads paper 'free'. The lady who came to collect it was so impressed that she felt guilty taking it for free and gave me £20. Result all round
