How to get rid of a TV in San Francisco

Why a TV is not bin waste

Televisions are handled in California as a separate, regulated electronic waste stream rather than as household trash. The reason is what is inside them: circuit boards with heavy metals, mercury-containing backlights in older flat panels, lithium in some newer sets, and — in cathode-ray sets — several kilograms of leaded glass in the tube itself.

Practically, that means:

• A television does not go in a landfill or recycling bin.
• It is not an ordinary bulky-furniture item on a curbside collection. If San Francisco's collection covers electronics at all it will be as its own category, with its own conditions — check the city's current bulky-item and e-waste pages for what applies now.
• Leaving one on the pavement is illegal dumping, the same as leaving a sofa, with the added problem that a broken CRT on a public footway is a genuine contamination issue.

California funds electronic waste recovery through a producer-and-purchase-based mechanism rather than by charging householders at the point of disposal, which is why free and low-cost drop-off routes generally exist. What those routes are, and their current terms, are published by the state and the city — look there rather than guessing.

Your four options

1. Retailer take-back. If you are buying a replacement, ask whether the shop will take the old set. Many will, sometimes as part of delivery. As with appliances, the conditions are worth confirming: same floor as the delivery, already disconnected, and a truck that can actually stop outside your building.

2. An e-waste drop-off or collection event. The correct route for a working or non-working set if you can transport it. Look up the current San Francisco options on the city's own page — locations and terms change.

3. Resale or giving it away. Realistic for a reasonably recent flat panel in working order. Essentially hopeless for a CRT; nobody in this city is driving up a hill to collect one.

4. A paid pickup. For a set that is upstairs, dead, enormous, or attached to a wall bracket you would rather not deal with.

What a pickup costs

Flat published prices, with proper e-waste handling, carry-out from any floor and disposal all included:

• TV (Under 42"): $62
• TV (42" to 65"): $68
• TV (65"+): $73
• Computer Monitor: $58
• Desktop Computer / Tower: $62
• Box of Electronics: $77
• Entertainment Center / TV Stand: $96
• Stereo / Sound System: $52  |  Speaker System (Large): $57
• Printer (Home / Inkjet): $58  |  Printer — Office / Laser: $71

San Francisco's visit minimum is $95. Every television on that list sits below it, so a TV on its own prices as a $95 visit. Almost nobody books a TV alone for that reason — it goes out with the stand, the old stereo, or whatever else the living room refresh produced.

Realistic combinations:

• Flat screen and the media unit it sat on: $68 + $96 = $164.
• Old CRT from the garage plus a monitor and a desktop tower: $62 + $58 + $62 = $182.
• Living room refresh — 65-inch-plus TV, TV stand and a large speaker system: $73 + $96 + $57 = $226.
• Home office wind-down — monitor, tower, laser printer and an office chair: $58 + $62 + $71 + $61 = $252.

The CRT in the garage

Nearly every San Francisco house with a garage has one of these, and it is the single hardest television to get rid of.

A large cathode-ray set is extraordinarily heavy for its size — a meaningful share of that weight is leaded glass — and the weight is all at the front. It has no handholds. It has usually been sitting on a concrete slab in a damp garage for over a decade, which means the casing is brittle and the base may be corroded onto whatever it is standing on.

Two rules. Do not carry it alone, and do not drop it. A broken tube is leaded glass and phosphor dust across a floor you have to use, and it turns a fifteen-minute job into a proper clean-up.

If yours is in the back corner behind ten years of boxes, it is almost always more sensible to put it on the same visit as a garage clear. A large junk pile is $208, so the CRT and the rest of the corner it is buried in comes to $62 + $208 = $270 — and you get the corner back.

Wall-mounted sets and San Francisco walls

If the television is on a bracket, say so when you book. Our crews take sets off wall mounts routinely, but the walls in this city vary enormously and it is worth knowing what is behind yours.

Victorian and Edwardian flats have lath-and-plaster walls, not plasterboard. A bracket screwed into lath alone is a bracket waiting to fail; one properly fixed into a stud has made a real hole in the plaster. Either way, expect to be patching afterwards — we remove the set and the bracket, not the decorating.

Newer conversions and the SoMa, Mission Bay and Rincon Hill towers are different again: plasterboard over steel or timber studs, and often a building rule about what can be fixed to a demising wall in the first place.

Before it goes: wipe it

A smart television is a computer with an account on it. Before it leaves the flat:

• Sign out of every streaming service, or better, do a factory reset from the settings menu.
• Un-pair it from your home network so it is not still holding your wi-fi credentials.
• Remove it from your account on any manufacturer app or smart-home hub.

Same for a desktop tower or a laptop going out with it — take the drive out or wipe it first. Recyclers process at volume and are not in the business of reading your data, but a set that is passed on rather than dismantled is a different matter.

Street-side notes

A TV pickup is quick, but the flat it is coming out of usually is not on the ground floor. Tell us the cross street, whether the block is one-way, how steep the grade is, and when street cleaning runs on your side. If the building has a garage door onto the street, mention it — a large set comes down far more easily through a garage than through a hallway with a bay window in it.

None of this changes the price. It changes the arrival slot, and it is the difference between a crew finding somewhere to stand and a crew circling your block twice.

Frequently asked questions