TV and electronics disposal in Philadelphia

The short answer

The minimum is $75 per visit, so a single small TV at $62 or a single monitor at $58 falls to the minimum on its own. Almost nobody has only one — in practice people clear a shelf.

Electronics are not ordinary curbside trash in Pennsylvania

This is the part people get wrong. Televisions and computer equipment are handled differently from general household trash in this state, and setting a TV out with the ordinary bags is not a reliable plan. Check the current Pennsylvania electronics recycling guidance and the city's own drop-off information before you put anything on the pavement.

Do not take that as a specific instruction about a specific site — the drop-off locations, the accepted item lists and the event schedules change, sometimes more than once a year. Read the current version. What is stable is the principle: a TV is not a bin bag, and a Philadelphia collection crew is not obliged to take it because you left it next to one.

The practical consequence on a narrow city street is real. A television abandoned on a Kensington or Frankford pavement does not quietly disappear. It sits there, it gets rained on, the screen ends up broken, and now there is glass on a pavement people walk children down.

The Philadelphia CRT in the basement

Every few jobs in this city turn up the same object: a rear-projection or tube television from the early 2000s, sitting in the basement of a row home in Mayfair, Olney or Port Richmond, because when the flat screen arrived nobody could face carrying the old one back up the stairs.

They are astonishingly heavy — a big tube set is a two-person lift on a flat floor, let alone up a steep basement staircase with low headroom and a turn at the top. They also contain leaded glass, which is exactly why the state handles them separately.

Under 42 inches it is $62, and size here means screen size, not weight. The awkwardness of getting it up out of a South Philly basement is included, not extra.

Wall-mounted TVs in Philly rentals and condos

Two situations, two different answers.

Rentals. A lot of Fishtown, Northern Liberties and Graduate Hospital rental units have a flat screen bolted to a party wall. The set comes off the bracket and goes on the truck at its size price. The bracket itself, the anchors and the drywall patch behind it are a different trade — sort that before your walkthrough if the lease requires it.

Center City condos. Same removal, but the building probably wants a reserved service lift and a certificate of insurance before anyone carries anything through a lobby near Rittenhouse or Washington Square. Arrange that first. It applies whether the load is a sofa or a single television.

What counts as a "box of electronics"

$77, and it is the most useful line on the list for most Philadelphia households. It is the drawer and shelf archaeology: old routers, three generations of phone chargers, a DVD player, a games console, cables, a scanner, a cordless phone base, speakers.

If the box is genuinely one box, that is $77. A monitor is separate at $58. A commercial-grade printer or copier — the kind that comes out of a small office on Chestnut Street or a converted floor in Old City — is $97.

A worked example from a Fishtown living room being cleared:

TV 42-65" $68 + entertainment center $96 + box of electronics $77 = $241.

A home-office version: computer monitor $58 + box of electronics $77 = $135, which is above the $75 minimum, so $135 is what you pay.

Wipe your data first

Nobody is going to do this for you and it takes ten minutes.

• Smart TVs. Factory reset. They hold your streaming accounts and your home Wi-Fi credentials.
• Computers. Pull the drive or wipe it properly. Deleting files is not wiping.
• Phones and tablets in the box. Sign out of the account before the reset, or the device is bricked for whoever might otherwise reuse it.
• Printers. Newer office machines keep scanned documents in memory.

Do this the evening before, not while two people are standing in your vestibule.

Before you pay, try the free routes

If the equipment still works, Philadelphia absorbs it. The university turnover at Temple, Drexel and Penn every August and May means there is genuine demand for working monitors, desks and small electronics. Local reuse and repair projects take some working gear. Some retailers run trade-in or take-back programs — check the current terms rather than assuming.

What will not move: cracked screens, anything with a tube in it, printers older than about five years, and anything that has been sitting in a damp Philly basement. For those, the $62 to $77 lines exist for a reason, and the price includes the part where it is disposed of the way it is supposed to be rather than left on a pavement.

Frequently asked questions