Massachusetts restricts electronics from ordinary disposal — and, exactly like the mattress rule, the restriction binds facilities rather than you. That distinction sounds academic until you realise what it means in practice: your easy option is closed at the far end, whatever you'd prefer. Here's what's covered and what's left.
TVs $84–$98 · monitors $78 · desktops $83 — certified processing, carried from any floor
Upload a Photo & Get Quote →If you've read our piece on the Massachusetts mattress restriction, this will be familiar — the state uses the same instrument.
A waste disposal ban closes the destination rather than policing your kerb. The state tells disposal facilities what they may not accept; facilities screen incoming loads; haulers who deliver banned material face consequences with those facilities. Electronics are on that list.
So the chain runs state → facility → hauler → your building → you, and by the time it reaches you it looks like "nobody will take my television." It isn't a rule about you. It's a rule about where the truck can go afterwards — which is why no legitimate hauler will quietly take it as ordinary trash.
Confirm current requirements with your own municipality. This page describes how the mechanism works; it isn't an authority on today's specifics.
Broadly, display devices and computer equipment: televisions of every type, computer monitors, desktops and laptops, and generally the peripherals around them. Printers, stereos and small electronics are usually handled through the same channels even where the formal restriction is narrower.
The practical test most people need: if it has a screen or a circuit board and it's bigger than a phone, assume it doesn't go in the trash and check the route. That heuristic will be right nearly every time and it costs nothing to apply.
Tube televisions and monitors deserve their own section, because they're where this topic stops being administrative and starts being a real problem.
The picture tube is leaded glass. There's very little market for the recovered material, and the sets are brutally heavy for their size — a large tube television approaches the weight of a washing machine in a case with no handholds.
The consequence: drop-off sites frequently cap CRT sizes, charge specifically for them, or decline them. This is the device where "just take it to recycling" most often ends in a wasted Saturday and a television still in the back of the car.
Check acceptance for your specific device before loading it. Not electronics generally — that specific tube TV, at that specific site, this month.
Flat removal: small $84, medium $91, large $98 — the same as any television, regardless of how much harder a CRT is to move. TV and electronics removal.
How it works: makers of televisions and computer equipment operate recycling and takeback programmes.
The catch: coverage varies by brand and device type, and some programmes require you to ship the item — which is fine for a laptop and absurd for a tube television. Check the manufacturer's own recycling page for what they'll take from you today.
Best for: laptops, tablets, phones and smaller equipment where shipping is realistic.
How it works: local programmes run recycling centres and periodic collection events that accept electronics.
The catch: hours, eligibility and per-item limits differ, CRTs are frequently treated as a special case, and — as with everything in this metro — Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, Quincy and Boston each run their own. Advice about one doesn't describe another.
Best for: flat panels, computers and peripherals you can transport, when your timing matches theirs. If it fits, it's free and it's the right answer.
How it works: some retailers accept an old device when a replacement is delivered or bought.
The catch: it has to be arranged at purchase. Once the new television is installed and the old one is in the hallway, that option has usually closed.
Best for: anyone replacing rather than simply disposing — and it's the most-missed easy route in the whole category. Ask before you check out, every time.
How it works: collected from wherever it sits and routed to certified processing.
Cost: TV $84 to $98 by size, monitor $78, desktop $83, small printer $78, commercial copier $131, stereo $70, large speaker $77, mixed electronics box $104.
The catch: the $75 minimum means a single monitor is barely worth a booking on its own — batch it. What you're buying, particularly with a CRT on an upper floor, is the carry and the certainty that it's accepted.
The most important paragraph on this page, and the one people skip.
We haul hardware. We do not wipe drives and we do not operate a data-destruction chain of custody. Any hauler implying otherwise is offering something they almost certainly don't run, and that's worth a direct question rather than an assumption.
What to reset, while the device still powers on: computers, phones and tablets — wipe or remove the drive. Smart TVs — factory reset clears Wi-Fi credentials and signed-in streaming accounts. Game consoles — accounts and stored payment methods. Office printers — can retain scanned documents in memory.
The timing matters more than the method: a dead device can't be reset, and pulling a drive out of a machine that won't boot is a considerably worse afternoon than clicking through a settings menu while it still works.
Everything above is the rule. The physical job here is the same as every other Boston removal — a tube television down three flights of a triple-decker staircase, or a desk-sized copier out of a converted rowhouse office.
Access doesn't change our price, which matters most in exactly this category: the devices are heavy, the buildings are old, and a CRT is the least carryable shape in consumer electronics. Allston · Dorchester · North End.
Electronics are small relative to their price, so per-item usually wins here — the opposite of furniture.
A home office trio — desktop $83, monitor $78, printer $78 — is $239, comfortably under the $325 quarter truck.
A TV and its entertainment centre is $202. Still per-item.
A full AV stack — large TV, stereo and two large speakers — reaches $322, and that volume genuinely fits a quarter truck, so the truck wins by $27 and takes the cabinet too.
The rule: stay per-item until speakers or furniture join the list. Seven itemised Boston jobs.
Check acceptance first, expect a no. Removal $84–$98. The device most likely to waste your Saturday.
Try donation or resale first — a working panel has a real market. Otherwise $84–$98.
No market. Certified processing via removal or a drop-off that accepts it.
$78 — near the $75 minimum, so batch it with something else.
$83 desktop. Wipe it or pull the drive first, while it still powers on.
$78 small, $131 commercial. Pull toner; office units may hold scanned documents.
$70 / $77. Vintage audio is the one corner here with a genuine collector market — check before it goes.
$104 as a mixed electronics box. Covers the chargers, remotes and adaptors nobody can identify.
Not on the truck. Lithium cells are a fire risk in a compacting load — dedicated battery drop-offs exist for exactly this.
Multiple monitors, towers and a copier move past the per-item crossover — quote both ways. Cleanout pricing.
Reset it while it still turns on, and check acceptance for the exact device before you drive anywhere. Those two steps prevent the only two bad outcomes in this category — an account or a drive leaving the building with a device you no longer control, and a wasted trip with a tube television nobody will take. The restriction itself isn't aimed at you, but it closes your simplest option, so the choice is a free route you've verified or a paid one that's certain. Both are fine. Guessing is not.
Free quote — certified processing, carried down from any floor
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