Mattresses and box springs removed from Santa Monica apartments, condos, walk-ups and houses, bagged at the door and routed into the state recycling stream.
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A mattress and its box spring use two of the five items Santa Monica allows per bulky pickup, with a 7 to 10 day wait outdoors in coastal damp. Mattress removal by Los Angeles Junk Removal & Hauling bags it at the door, carries it down, and routes it into the prepaid state recycling stream.
Getting rid of a mattress in Santa Monica has three legitimate routes and one common mistake. The city's own Resource Recovery and Recycling Division names mattresses as an accepted bulky item, collected Monday through Friday, with a maximum of five items per pickup and three free pickups a year — so one mattress and its box spring immediately uses two of your five. The items must already be at the front curb or in the alley behind the property and labeled for city pick-up before you call (866) 311-7266 or email 311@santamonica.gov, and you should allow 7 to 10 days. The second route is free retailer take-back: under the California mattress stewardship program a retailer delivering a new mattress must take your old one at no charge, funded by the recycling fee charged at purchase, which rose to $18.00 per unit for sales on or after April 1, 2026. The third is a hauler. The mistake is leaving a mattress in a Santa Monica alley without a request, where it blocks a shared access route for a week and a half. Los Angeles Junk Removal & Hauling bags it at the door, carries it out, and quotes free upfront.
Two facts sit oddly next to each other here. The recycling of your mattress has already been paid for, by you, at the till. And yet the mattress is the object most likely to end up leaning against a Santa Monica garage door for ten days.
The reason is not cost, it is logistics: five-item limits, a 7 to 10 day queue and a stair between the bedroom and the alley. This page covers both halves. What we clear across the city is on junk removal in Santa Monica, and the county-wide service is on mattress removal.
Start with the state layer, because it applies everywhere and most people do not know it exists. California runs a mattress stewardship program under CalRecycle oversight, administered by the nonprofit Mattress Recycling Council and funded by a recycling fee collected on every mattress, futon and foundation at the point of sale. That fee is charged per unit regardless of size, is not subject to sales tax, and rose to $18.00 per unit for sales on or after April 1, 2026. It funds more than 240 permanent drop-off sites statewide and around a hundred collection events a year, and Los Angeles County alone has nearly twenty permanent no-cost collection centers.
Two consequences follow. First, retailer take-back: a retailer delivering a new mattress in California must take the old one away free. If you are replacing rather than simply disposing, say yes at the point of sale, because arranging it afterwards is far harder. Second, free drop-off: the network exists and costs nothing, but a queen mattress does not fit in a car, and a mattress bent onto a roof rack is both an unsafe load and likely to arrive in a condition that limits what can be done with it.
Then the city layer, which is entirely Santa Monica's own. Mattresses are named among the examples of accepted bulky items in the city's collection, run Monday through Friday for residential and commercial customers. The ceiling is five items per pickup and three free pickups a year, and the hourly rate effective July 1, 2025 of $253.37 with a one-hour minimum applies above that. Practically, a bed is two items — mattress and box spring — so a two-bedroom turnover is already at or over the ceiling before you count anything else.
And the operational rules matter more with a mattress than with anything else. Items must be at the front curb or in the alley, clearly labeled for city pick-up, before you request the collection. You then allow 7 to 10 days. During those days the mattress is outdoors. Santa Monica is a coastal city with heavy marine layer most mornings, and a mattress that has absorbed ten days of damp is heavier, dirtier and much harder to process than the one that went out. That is the single best argument for either timing it tightly or having it taken straight from the bedroom.
Sources: City of Santa Monica and the Mattress Recycling Council. Both cited in full below.
| City program | Santa Monica's own Resource Recovery and Recycling Division, Monday through Friday |
|---|---|
| Mattresses | named among the accepted bulky items in the city's own examples |
| Item ceiling | five items per pickup; a mattress and its box spring are two of them |
| Free allowance | three free pickups per year |
| Above the allowance | the rate effective July 1, 2025 of $253.37 per hour, one-hour minimum |
| Lead time | allow 7 to 10 days, handled in the order received |
| Placement | front curb or the alley behind the property, clearly labeled for city pick-up, before you call |
| Requesting | email 311@santamonica.gov or call (866) 311-7266 with address, unit number, phone and description |
| State recycling fee | $18.00 per unit for sales on or after April 1, 2026, charged per unit regardless of size |
| Retailer take-back | California retailers must take your old mattress free when they deliver a new one |
| County drop-off | nearly 20 permanent no-cost mattress collection centers across Los Angeles County |
Sources: City of Santa Monica, how to request bulky and abandoned item collection · Mattress Recycling Council, 2026 California mattress recycling fee adjustment · Mattress Recycling Council, California program · Los Angeles County, Mattress Recycling Program
A queen mattress is about sixty inches by eighty and will not hold a rigid shape. A Santa Monica walk-up typically gives you a bedroom door, a short internal hall, a unit door that opens inward, an external stair with a landing barely deeper than the door swing, a courtyard path and then the alley. That is five direction changes, and the binding one is almost always the landing rather than the stair itself. Memory foam makes it worse, not better, because it sags through the middle exactly when you need it to behave like a board.
The tuck-under and subterranean garages common north of Wilshire and through Ocean Park add a different problem. They are the natural route to the alley, but the posted clearance is low and a box truck cannot follow, so the mattress comes out through the garage on foot and meets the vehicle at the street or the alley mouth. That is fine when it is planned and awkward when it is discovered.
The alley itself deserves respect. Santa Monica's residential blocks are alley-served, which is genuinely convenient: it is where the bins live, where the garages open and where the city asks you to put bulky items. It is also narrow, shared, and the only vehicular access to a row of garages. A mattress left across it for ten days is not a small inconvenience to one neighbor, it is the access route for the block. We stage in the alley only as long as it takes to load.
Then there is the building's own layer: notice for a move, elevator padding in the midrise stock, a designated loading door, and in many managed buildings a certificate of insurance before a crew works in the building. All ordinary, all much easier the day before. And one Santa Monica specific: on multiple-unit turnovers, which are common here, the labor per mattress falls sharply once the route is set up, so doing six at once is far more efficient than doing one six times.
Finally, the marine layer. Santa Monica sits on the coast and mornings are damp for much of the year. A mattress bagged at the door and loaded straight onto a truck is dry. One that has waited in an alley through a week of marine mornings is not, and dampness is the main reason a mattress gets downgraded at a processor. If the mattress is part of a larger clearance see furniture removal in Santa Monica.
Tell us how many, and which floor they are on. That is a Santa Monica mattress quote.
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Our own crews on Los Angeles County jobs. The mattress removal we run in Santa Monica looks like this too: side yards, narrow walkways and the back of the property is where the work actually is.
A mattress is among the most completely recyclable bulky items in a household, which is precisely why California built a funded stewardship program around it rather than leaving it to landfills. Dismantled at a processor it separates into four main materials. The steel innerspring goes to scrap metal and carries the clearest value. The polyurethane foam is recovered and commonly reprocessed into carpet underlay. The cotton and textile layers go to fiber recovery. A box spring's timber frame is chipped.
Every one of those routes depends on condition, and specifically on dryness. A wet mattress is heavier, contaminated and much harder to separate, and a soaked one can be refused outright. In a coastal city with a persistent marine layer that is not a theoretical risk, it is the normal outcome of leaving one outside for the length of a 7 to 10 day collection queue.
The financial mechanics are worth stating because they explain what you are actually paying for. The recycling was funded at purchase by the state fee, currently $18.00 per unit for sales on or after April 1, 2026. So a mattress quote in Santa Monica is not a disposal quote, it is a labor and access quote: the stair, the count, the distance to a legal loading position. Ours is priced that way and given free upfront.
Two things that never travel in a mattress load. Adjustable and powered bed bases contain motors, transformers and control boards, which are universal waste under California rules — the household exemption ended on February 9, 2006, banning that whole category from the trash. And anything chemical from the same room. Santa Monica handles that second fraction unusually well: the city contracts a free residential door-to-door household hazardous waste collection on (877) 443-2371, accepting paints, solvents, fuels, batteries, fluorescent tubes, electronic waste, pool and photo chemicals, cleaning chemicals and sharps, up to 125 pounds per pickup.
Sources: CalRecycle, Mattress Recycling Program · Californians Against Waste, background on universal waste and DTSC regulations · City of Santa Monica, how to dispose of hazardous materials
Same rule in Santa Monica as anywhere else in Los Angeles County. The local part is the program above, not the disposal law. Full detail on mattress removal.
This page is mattress removal in Santa Monica specifically. The wider service is on mattress removal across Los Angeles, and everything we haul in this city is on junk removal in Santa Monica. Same crew, different job: Furniture removal in Santa Monica, Appliance removal in Santa Monica, Estate cleanouts in Santa Monica. Pricing works the same way everywhere: how our pricing works, and the full map is on areas we serve.
We are already next door most days. The whole list is on areas we serve.
Same crew, same trucks, same free upfront quote.
Couches, sectionals, mattresses in the same trip, beds, desks and wardrobes carried down rather than dragged.
Fridges, washers and AC units. Refrigerant units are handled as universal waste.
A full property cleared with care, on probate or move-out timelines.
Booked and cleared the same day, most days, across LA County.
The whole garage in one visit. We sort, donate what is usable and sweep the slab.
TVs, CRT monitors and computers. Banned from the trash in California.
The five-item math, the alley, the marine layer and where it ends up.
Yes, within the program's limits. Mattresses are named among the city's accepted bulky items, collected Monday to Friday, with three free pickups a year and a maximum of five items each. Put the mattress at the front curb or in the alley, label it for city pick-up, then email 311@santamonica.gov or call (866) 311-7266 and allow 7 to 10 days. Bear in mind a mattress and box spring count as two items, so a single bed already uses two fifths of a pickup.
The city asks you to allow 7 to 10 days and handles work orders in the order received rather than by appointment. In a coastal city with a marine layer most mornings, that is a long time for a mattress to be outdoors. A damp mattress is heavier, dirtier and harder to process, and a soaked one can be refused at a recycler. If you would rather it went straight from the bedroom to a truck on a day you choose, that is the job we do.
Yes. The hard part is almost never the stair, it is the landing at the top, where the mattress has to turn in a space barely deeper than the door swing. Two people, one above and one below, and bagging it first so it slides rather than catches, handles the large majority of Santa Monica walk-ups. Tell us the floor and whether the stair turns when you book, and we bring the right number of people the first time.
Yes, and it is the best one available. Under the California program a retailer delivering a new mattress must take your old one away at no charge, because the recycling was already funded by the fee charged at purchase. Say yes when they ask at the point of sale. It is considerably harder to arrange after the delivery has happened, and at that point you are back to a city pickup with a 7 to 10 day wait or a hauler.
Yes, and it is a common Santa Monica call because a six-mattress turnover simply does not fit a five-item city pickup. The efficient way is one visit: we plan where the truck stands, which stair or elevator is used, and whether the building needs notice or a certificate of insurance, then work through the units. Labor per mattress falls sharply once the route is set up, so doing them together is far better value than staging them across three city collections.
It goes into the state recycling stream your purchase fee already paid for. At a processor it is dismantled into four materials: steel innerspring to scrap metal, polyurethane foam recovered and commonly reprocessed into carpet underlay, cotton and textile layers to fiber recovery, and a box spring's timber frame chipped. That is why we bag it at the door and keep it off the ground: the condition it arrives in decides how much of it can actually be recovered.
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Collection rules, transfer stations and permit counters change at the city line, so each of these is written for that city rather than for Santa Monica. A job that straddles two of them is still one visit and one number.
Everything we haul in the cities next door: Mar Vista, West Los Angeles, Westwood. The whole list is on areas we serve.
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