TV Removal & Recycling

Televisions are regulated e-waste in Arizona, not regular trash. Older CRT tube sets contain several pounds of leaded glass, and flat panels made before roughly 2012 use mercury backlight tubes. Neither belongs in a curbside bin, and both are refused by bulk-trash programs across the Valley.

The awkward part is usually not the weight, it is the shape and the mount. A 75-inch panel is light enough for two people but flexes if it is carried wrong, and a wall-mounted set needs to come off a bracket that is lagged into studs before it goes anywhere. We bring the drivers and take the bracket too if you want it gone.

Old rear-projection and console TVs are the opposite problem: a 1990s tube console can weigh 200 pounds inside a wood cabinet, and it usually lives in a room it was carried into before a doorway got narrowed by trim or flooring.

Electronics require an appropriate downstream handling option rather than ordinary household disposal. The set is dismantled rather than shredded whole: circuit boards are separated for precious-metal recovery, the plastic housing is chipped for reuse, aluminum heat sinks and steel chassis go to metal recycling, and the leaded glass from CRTs is handled as regulated material.

Mercury backlights in older LCDs are removed as a separate waste stream. This is the specific reason a 2009 flat panel should not be tossed in a bin even though it looks like harmless plastic and glass, and why the transfer stations we use will reject one on sight.

If your TV still powers on and displays a clean picture, say so when you book. Working sets get offered to donation partners before anything else happens to them, and a five-year-old panel with a working remote frequently finds a second home.

Removing a wall bracket leaves four to six lag holes in the drywall. We take the mount off and hand you the hardware, but patching and painting is a drywall job, not a haul-away job, so plan for it if you are moving out of a rental.

High-rise and mid-rise buildings in Phoenix and Old Town Scottsdale usually require a service elevator reservation for anything over a certain size. A 75-inch panel counts. Mention the building at booking and we schedule around the dock hours instead of getting turned away at the desk.

Multi-set cleanouts are common after an estate or an office refresh, and they price much better together. Six TVs on one trip is a fraction of six separate pickups, and the e-waste run to the recycler is the same run either way.