TV and electronics disposal in Portland

The short answer

Visit minimum is $75, so a single small TV at $62 or one monitor at $58 still falls under the $75 floor for a dedicated visit. Two items usually clear it.

The free route, and when it is worth taking

Oregon runs a statewide electronics recycling program, and the metro has nonprofit reuse operations — Free Geek being the one every Portlander names — that take computers and peripherals. Between them, a lot of e-waste can be dropped off without paying a hauler.

Take that route when:

• You have a car and the item fits in it.
• The item is a laptop, a desktop tower, a monitor, a keyboard, a pile of cables.
• You can get there during their hours, which are not evenings.
• The gear is not physically enormous.

Check the current accepted-item list before you drive over. These programs change what they take, and they have limits on how many items per household per visit. Turning up with a car full and being told it is three items today is a wasted afternoon.

Skip that route when the item is a 65-inch TV that needs two people, or an old rear-projection set, or when it is in the basement of a house with a stair you already know about.

The tube TV in the Portland basement

Every pre-war house on the east side seems to have one. A CRT television, or a rear-projection monster from about 2003, sitting in an unfinished basement in Woodstock or Montavilla, under a tarp, behind the furnace.

Two things make this the classic hard job here. First, CRTs are astonishingly heavy for their size — the leaded glass in the tube is most of the weight, and a 32-inch tube set is a genuine two-person lift. Second, the way out is the basement stair: steep rise, narrow tread, quarter-turn at the bottom, header at the top. You cannot get a good grip on a TV and you cannot see your feet.

That is a $62 item on our list, and the price is the same whether it is in the front room or at the bottom of that stair. No stair charge. It is also, frankly, the one item where we would push back on the DIY route hardest — a dropped CRT on a stairwell is broken leaded glass in a confined space.

The mounted flat screen

The other Portland pattern: a flat screen bracketed to the wall of a converted attic bedroom or an ADU over the garage, with the cabling run inside the wall by the previous owner.

Tell us when you book if it is still mounted. Coming off the bracket is easy enough; what is not obvious is that in a lot of older Portland houses the bracket went into plaster-and-lath rather than drywall, and it does not come off cleanly. If you are patching before a sale, take it down yourself a few days early and deal with the plaster on your own schedule.

Sizes and prices: under 42 inch $62, 42 to 65 inch $68, 65 inch and over $73. The stand or entertainment center underneath is $96.

Worked combinations

Addition shown:

• TV (42 to 65 inch) + entertainment center: $68 + $96 = $164
• Old TV (under 42 inch) + new TV (65 inch plus) + box of electronics: $62 + $73 + $77 = $212
• Home office: desk $83 + office chair $61 + computer monitor $58 + box of electronics $77 = $279
• TV (65 inch plus) + sofa + entertainment center: $73 + $126 + $96 = $295

If you are clearing a whole room — the TV, the stand, the couch, the boxes of cables and the rug — compare against a quarter load at $241 and take the lower.

Home office and small business

Portland has a lot of people working from a converted bedroom, a basement office, or an ADU. When that setup gets dismantled, the usual pile is a desk at $83, an office chair at $61, a monitor or two at $58 each, and a box of electronics at $77.

Small commercial jobs in the Central Eastside, Lloyd or along Sandy come up too — a commercial copier or printer is $97, a cubicle or office workstation is $163, a conference table is $260.

One thing to sort before pickup, wherever the gear came from: wipe the drives. Any hauler, any drop-off, any program. Pull the drive or wipe it yourself. That is on you, not on the recycler.

Batteries and the things that do not go in the truck

Loose lithium-ion batteries, vape pens, power tool packs and swollen laptop batteries are a fire risk in a truck and in a transfer station. They go to a battery drop-off or household hazardous waste instead, and the Metro facilities publish current intake rules — check them rather than assuming.

A battery still inside a laptop or a device is fine. It is the loose ones, and anything visibly puffed, that need separating out. Say so when you book if you are unsure.

Frequently asked questions