What mattress recycling costs in Pittsburgh

The short answer

Having JunkRabbit take a mattress costs $82 for a twin, $94 for a full, $103 for a queen and $114 for a king, with carry-out from any floor included. We recycle whatever we can. If you want to drop a mattress at a recycler yourself, the Allegheny County Health Department publishes a recycling resource directory and drop-off finder you can use to locate an outlet, and each outlet sets its own fee.

What a mattress is actually made of

A mattress looks like one object, but a recycler sees four or five. A typical innerspring mattress has a steel coil unit, foam and fiber padding, a fabric cover and, under a box spring, a wood frame with more steel. Steel is the easiest part to recover, because scrap metal has a market. Wood can be chipped. Foam and fiber are the hard part, because they are bulky, light and often dirty. That is why mattress recycling is a labor job, not just a drop-off. Someone has to cut the cover, pull the padding and separate the metal before any of it is worth anything. Memory-foam and hybrid mattresses have less steel and more foam, which makes them less attractive to recyclers. A mattress that has sat in a damp Pittsburgh basement for years, or has stains, is harder still. None of this changes what you pay us; it explains why recycling a mattress is never quite free anywhere.

Finding a recycler around Allegheny County

There is no single City mattress-recycling drop-off to point you at, so the directory is the place to start. The Allegheny County Health Department maintains a Recycling Resource Directory, last updated in June 2025, plus an online drop-off finder. Use it to look up mattress outlets, scrap metal yards and other specialty recyclers near you. Before you load anything, call the outlet and ask four things. Do they accept residential mattresses? Do they take box springs too? What is the fee per piece? What are their hours on the day you want to go? Some places only accept clean, dry mattresses, which rules out anything from a flooded basement. Some only take loads from businesses. Fees and policies change, so treat the directory as a list of numbers to call rather than a promise. If the nearest outlet is across the river and closes before you finish work, factor that in.

The real cost of doing it yourself

The drop-off fee is only one line. You also need a vehicle that fits a queen or king flat, because neither one folds and a box spring does not bend at all. That usually means borrowing a pickup or renting a van for a few hours. Then there is the carry. A lot of Pittsburgh homes are pre-war rowhouses with tight, turning stairs, and in Lawrenceville, Bloomfield or the South Side Flats the mattress may have to come down two flights and out through a narrow front door. On the Slopes, Mt. Washington or Troy Hill, the house may sit above the street on public steps. Add the drive across a bridge or two, the wait at the gate and the drive home. For one mattress that can easily take a whole Saturday morning. Compare all of that against $103 for a queen with the carry and the trip already included, and decide which one your morning is worth.

The free curb option and its limits

Inside the City of Pittsburgh, a mattress can go out with your regular trash at no charge. The City accepts mattresses and box springs as bulk items, with a limit of two items per week, set out no earlier than 6 p.m. the night before and no later than 6 a.m. on collection day. That is genuinely free, and for one mattress on a flat street it is often the right answer. It is not a recycling program, though, and it does not carry anything down the stairs for you. If your mattress, box spring and frame all have to go, you are looking at two weeks of bulk allowance or the City's paid collection, which costs $173 for the first hour and $54 for each additional hour. In the suburbs, the rules depend on your own municipality's hauler. Check before you set anything out.

Flat prices, with the math shown

A king mattress and a separate box spring is $114 + $92 = $206. A queen set plus a futon from the spare room is $143 + $111 = $254. Two full mattresses from a guest room are $94 + $94 = $188. There is a $100 order minimum, no stairs fee and no sales tax line, since hauling is not a taxable service in Pennsylvania.

When a pickup makes the most sense

A pickup earns its price in a few specific Pittsburgh situations. One is the student move-out, when a mattress is one of six things that have to leave an Oakland or Shadyside apartment before the lease ends. Another is the hillside house, where the mattress has to go down interior stairs and then down a flight of city steps to the street. A third is the estate cleanout in Squirrel Hill, Penn Hills or Bethel Park, where several beds have to go at once and the family is not local. A fourth is a mattress that is damp, stained or possibly infested, which nobody wants to handle twice. In all of those, the flat price covers carrying it out, loading it and dealing with it afterward. Book by 4 PM for same-day pickup, choose a 2-hour window, and the price you see before booking only changes if you approve the change.

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