Los Angeles County is not one waste system. It is dozens of them, and which side of a street you live on decides whether your old couch goes for free, for a fee, or not at all.
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City of Los Angeles residents get unlimited free bulky-item pickup from LA Sanitation, requested at least one business day before their regular trash day on 1-800-773-2489 or through MyLA311. Surrounding cities run separate programs with annual caps: Long Beach allows twelve collections a year, Glendale four, Pasadena two, Torrance one.
The single most expensive mistake in Los Angeles is paying someone to take away something your own city would have collected for nothing. Every program below is free unless the row says otherwise, and every one of them is curbside: you still have to get the item down the stairs, out of the garage and onto the parkway yourself, on the right morning. That, and the wait, is usually what decides whether the free route is actually the right one.
This is the comparison nobody publishes: every bulky-item program in and around Los Angeles in one table, free routes first, with the annual cap, the notice period, the phone number and the refusals for each, and the date each one was last checked against the city's own page.
It exists because Los Angeles County is not one waste system. There are eighty-eight incorporated cities plus more than a hundred unincorporated communities, and refuse is a local service in nearly all of them. The City of Los Angeles collects its own trash through LA Sanitation. Long Beach, Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena and Santa Monica run their own crews. Inglewood, West Hollywood, El Segundo and Manhattan Beach contract it out to a franchise hauler, and the unincorporated county has a franchise system of its own. Nobody publishes the whole picture, so people either pay for something that was free or wait three weeks for something that was never going to work.
LASAN's bulky-item collection is free and, in the city's own words, “an unlimited curbside service at no additional charge to you.” There is no cap on requests per year and no per-item charge. It runs on your normal trash day, which is the catch: if your collection day is Thursday and you call on Thursday afternoon, you are waiting until next Thursday.
The city asks for an itemized list when you book — “one mattress, two chairs, and a desk” — so the yard sends a truck the right size. Skip that and a three-seat sectional can get left behind.
Count what is going out and name it. One mattress, one box spring, two dining chairs. LASAN dispatches the truck against that list.
Online through the LASAN service request form, in the MyLA311 app, or on the 24-hour Customer Care Center line, 1-800-773-2489.
At the curb, clear of parked cars, hydrants and the bins themselves. Carpet rolled and tied. Nothing blocking the sidewalk.
Five city yards open one Saturday a month, 8:00am to 4:30pm, free.
| Cost | Free, unlimited, no annual cap |
|---|---|
| Notice needed | At least 1 business day before your regular trash day |
| How to book | LASAN online form, MyLA311 app, or 1-800-773-2489 (24 hours) |
| Takes | Furniture, mattresses and box springs, toilets and sinks, rolled and tied carpet, large wood and doors, e-waste including TVs and monitors |
| Will not take | Automotive parts and used oil, construction material (concrete, brick, dirt), commercial appliances, paint, solvents and chemicals, medicines and needles, fluorescent tubes, cardboard |
| Free drop-off events | One Saturday a month, 8:00am–4:30pm, five yards |
| 2026 remaining dates | Sept 19, Oct 10, Nov 21, Dec 12 |
| Drop-off yards | 11050 Pendelton St, Sun Valley · 8840 Vanalden Ave, Northridge · 1400 N Gaffey St, San Pedro · 2027 Stoner Ave, West LA · 2201 E Washington Blvd, Central LA |
Source: LA Sanitation & Environment, Schedule a Bulky Item Pickup, read September 11, 2026.
Step outside the city limit and the deal changes completely. Long Beach is the most generous program in the region; Torrance gives you one pickup a year and then you are on your own. Two cities charge for the pickup itself, and several refuse whole categories — Beverly Hills will not take mattresses, tires, e-waste or anything containing refrigerant at all.
Find your row. Every figure comes from that city's own published page, all of them listed in full at the bottom.
| City | Free pickups a year | Items per pickup | Notice needed | Contact | Will not take |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| City of Los Angeles | Unlimited | No published cap | 1 business day | 1-800-773-2489 or MyLA311 | Hazardous, C&D, tires, commercial appliances, fluorescent tubes |
| Long Beach | 12 | 8 large items or 25 bags | Booked in advance | (562) 570-2876 | Appliances, TVs and tires ride a separate truck; tires 16in or under, max 5 |
| Inglewood | Unlimited | Not published | By noon the day before | (800) 299-4898 | Appliances and e-waste go through Public Works, (310) 412-5333 |
| Manhattan Beach | 6 | 3 | 48 hours | (310) 830-7100 (WM) | An older city page still says 3 visits of 9 items |
| Glendale | 4 | Not published | 3 business days | (818) 548-3916 or the Recycle Coach app | Takes appliances, TVs, furniture and mattresses |
| El Segundo | 4 | 6 | 2 days | (310) 540-2977 (EDCO) | Tires, dirt, concrete, asphalt, chemicals. Single-family and duplex only |
| Santa Monica | 3 | 5 | Collected in 7 to 10 days | (866) 311-7266 | Extra pickups billed at $253.37 an hour, one-hour minimum |
| Pasadena | 2 | About 3 cubic yards, nothing heavier than two people can lift | About 2 weeks | (626) 744-7311 or the Citizen Service app | E-waste, construction debris. City refuse customers only |
| Culver City | 2 single-family, 1 multi-family | 6 | Confirmed in 72 hours, scheduled about 2 weeks out | (310) 253-6400 | Collected furniture goes to landfill |
| Torrance | 1 | 20 | Phone booking only | (855) 354-5623 | Metal appliances, e-waste, tires, auto parts, C&D. Mattresses accepted and recycled |
| West Hollywood | Free, no annual cap published | 2 | About a week | (888) 336-6100 (Athens) | E-waste, hazardous, auto parts, construction debris |
| Burbank | Free, but with a per-item fee | Not published | 1 business day by phone, 2 via Our Burbank 311 | (818) 238-3800 | $12.14 special handling fee per refrigerator, freezer, washer, dryer, water heater, mattress, box spring or tire. Max 4 tires |
| Beverly Hills | Free from the alley only | 2 to 3 | 24 to 72 business hours | City of Beverly Hills Public Works | Mattresses, tires, e-waste, refrigerant appliances. $91.86 if collected from the curb or parkway |
Sources: each city's own bulky-item page — Long Beach, Glendale, Burbank, Pasadena, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, Culver City, West Hollywood, Inglewood, Torrance, El Segundo and Manhattan Beach. Read September 11, 2026.
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Our own crews on Los Angeles County jobs. Side yards, narrow walkways and the back of the property is where most of the work actually happens.
More than a million people in Los Angeles County live in unincorporated communities — East Los Angeles, Altadena, Hacienda Heights, View Park, Ladera Heights, Topanga, Acton, Castaic, Val Verde and dozens more. There is no city hall to call, and a Google search for “bulky item pickup” plus your neighborhood name will send you to a city page that does not cover you.
Collection there is run by Los Angeles County Public Works through two structures: the Franchise Solid Waste Collection System, and the Garbage Disposal Districts, which are unincorporated areas where trash and recycling are provided by contract waste haulers. In both cases the service, the schedule and the bulky-item terms come from the hauler holding that area's contract, not from the county directly. Start with the County's CleanLA line, 1-888-CLEAN-LA, or email trash@pw.lacounty.gov, and ask which hauler holds your area and what its bulky-item terms are.
One county rule applies wherever you are in the unincorporated area, and it is the one that turns a pickup into a citation. Title 20, Section 72 of the County Code bars putting solid waste or a container out before 5:00pm the day before collection, or leaving it out after 8:00pm on collection day, or more than two hours after it was actually collected, whichever is later.
Source: Los Angeles County Public Works, CleanLA — Trash Collection, read September 11, 2026.
Four categories are refused by every program on this page, and they are the four that fill most garages.
Anything hazardous. Paint, solvents, motor oil, pool chemicals, pesticides, car batteries, propane cylinders, fluorescent tubes. None of it may go at the curb and none of it may legally ride on a general hauler's truck either. City and County residents drop it free at one of the seven S.A.F.E. Collection Centers, up to a state transport limit of 125 pounds or 15 gallons per visit.
Construction and demolition debris. Concrete, brick, dirt, drywall, tile, roofing. In the City of Los Angeles, mixed C&D must be hauled by a permitted private hauler to a City-certified processing facility under Ordinance 181519 — the penalty runs to $5,000 per load that goes anywhere else.
Refrigerant appliances. Fridges, freezers, window air conditioners and dehumidifiers. Some cities take them on a separate truck, some charge, Beverly Hills refuses them outright.
Tires. Excluded from LA City pickup entirely. Burbank caps at four and charges per item; Long Beach takes five at 16 inches or under.
Sources: LASAN S.A.F.E. Centers and LASAN Construction & Demolition Recycling Program.
We are a junk removal company telling you to use the free service first, so it is worth being straight about where it stops working.
It is curbside, and only curbside. No program in this county sends anyone into your house, up a staircase, or into a garage. If the sofa is on the second floor of a walk-up in Koreatown, free pickup does not solve your problem; it solves the last ten feet of it.
It runs on the city's clock. One business day in LA City, two weeks in Pasadena and Culver City, a year of waiting in Torrance once you have used your single pickup. If escrow closes Friday or the lease ends Saturday, that clock is the whole problem.
It is item-by-item, and the caps are low. Two items in West Hollywood. Three in Manhattan Beach. Five in Santa Monica. A garage cleanout is forty or fifty items and is simply not what these programs are for.
Free does not always mean recycled. Culver City states plainly that bulky furniture it collects is landfilled. If where it ends up matters to you, that is worth knowing before you put it out.
And it assumes you can carry it. Not one of the programs above publishes a carry-out or in-home option. If you are eighty-one, or recovering from surgery, or on your own with a sleeper sofa on a second floor, the free service is free in the same way a free gym membership is: only if you can do the work. That is worth saying plainly, because no city page says it. Ask your own city whether it offers any assisted or back-of-property collection before you assume it does not — some haulers will accommodate a documented need even where it is not published — and if the answer is no, that gap is exactly the job a crew is for.
On language: LA Sanitation publishes its bulky drop-off event flyer in Spanish as well as English, and the 24-hour Customer Care Center on 1-800-773-2489 is the single best number to call in any language rather than working through a web form.
In the City of Los Angeles the free program is written for single-family residents, meaning buildings of one to four units. A building of five units or more is a commercial account under recycLA, the city's exclusive franchise system, and its bulky collection runs through the franchise hauler rather than LASAN. The city adopted a Multi-family Bulky Item Fee that appears on the LADWP bill rather than being free at the point of use.
The practical version: in a fourplex, call 311. In a thirty-unit building, call the property manager, because the collection is the building's contract, not yours — and leaving a mattress by the dumpster in the meantime is an illegal dumping offense under California Penal Code 374.3, not a favor to the building.
Sources: LASAN recycLA and LASAN bulky item pickup (single-family residents).
Every rule, fee, limit and deadline on this page is from the body that sets it. Checked on the date above; if a city changes its program we change the page.
Same crew, one visit, one number agreed before anything is lifted.
Couches, sectionals, mattresses in the same trip, beds, desks and wardrobes carried down rather than dragged.
Recycled through a state-funded program, not dumped. Box springs and futons too.
Fridges, washers and AC units. Refrigerant units are handled as universal waste.
The whole garage in one visit. We sort, donate what is usable and sweep the slab.
The rest of the LA disposal manual.
Refrigerant makes a fridge hazardous waste until a certified technician removes it, which decides every route you can legally take.
Free curbside pickup, free drop-off sites, the state recycling fee you already paid, and the fine for leaving it in an alley.
The state and city penalties, why liability follows the waste back to whoever produced it, and how to get a pile cleared off your street.
The follow-up questions people ask after this one.
Yes. In the City of Los Angeles, LA Sanitation describes bulky-item collection as an unlimited curbside service at no additional charge, with no annual cap. Surrounding cities each run their own program; most give a set number of free pickups a year, and Burbank, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica charge in specific situations.
The City of Los Angeles does not publish a hard per-request item cap, but it asks for an itemized list so it can send a truck of the right size. Other cities do cap it: eight large items in Long Beach, six in Culver City and El Segundo, five in Santa Monica, three in Manhattan Beach and two in West Hollywood.
LA City collects on your next regular trash day as long as you booked at least one business day earlier. Inglewood needs a request by noon the day before. Beverly Hills quotes 24 to 72 business hours, Santa Monica 7 to 10 days, and Pasadena and Culver City run roughly two weeks out.
It depends where you are. Long Beach and Glendale take appliances, Long Beach on a separate truck. Burbank takes them with a per-item special handling fee. Beverly Hills will not take any appliance containing refrigerant at all. LA City excludes commercial appliances from curbside pickup.
No. Every bulky program in Los Angeles County is curbside. The item has to be at the curb or, in Beverly Hills, in the alley. Nobody comes inside, up stairs, or into a garage, which is the single biggest reason people end up hiring a crew instead.
Setting bulky waste out without a scheduled collection is illegal dumping. Under California Penal Code 374.3 it is an infraction or misdemeanor, and Los Angeles enforces it with fines and, increasingly, with cameras. Booking the free pickup takes about three minutes and costs nothing.
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