Where does San Diego junk actually go?

The short answer

Four destinations, in this order:

• Donation, for anything clean and functional that an organization will actually accept.
• Regulated recycling streams, for the things California does not allow in general waste - mattresses, screens, and anything containing refrigerant.
• General recycling, for metal, wood and cardboard.
• Landfill, for the remainder. For most of the city that means the Miramar landfill; other parts of the county have their own facilities.

All of that handling is in the item price. A sofa is $126, a queen mattress is $103, a refrigerator is $164, and there is no separate disposal fee, environmental fee or recycling surcharge on any of them.

Donation comes first, and fails more than you would think

If something is clean, complete and working, donation is the best outcome for everyone. Habitat ReStore locations and the larger thrift operations around the county take furniture, working small appliances, kitchenware and books.

The reason more does not get donated is condition, and San Diego has two condition problems that other cities do not.

Sun. A sofa against a west-facing window in Pacific Beach, Ocean Beach or Bird Rock fades unevenly within a couple of summers, and uneven fading is an automatic decline at intake.

Sand and salt. Sand works into upholstery seams in the beach neighborhoods, and salt air corrodes metal frames and fasteners indoors, not just on the balcony.

So a lot of what leaves a San Diego home looks fine from across the room and is not donatable up close. Honest answer: we route what can be donated, and the rest goes to recycling and disposal.

Mattresses

California charges a recycling fee on every mattress and box spring sold in the state, which funds a statewide collection and recycling network. Mattresses are meant to be recovered, not buried.

What comes out of one: steel from the innersprings, which is scrapped and remelted; polyurethane foam, commonly reprocessed into carpet underlay; fiber and felt padding; and the timber in a box spring frame. A box spring is one of the more completely recyclable objects in a house.

The condition that breaks it is water. A mattress that has been sitting in an alley through a marine-layer morning is too wet to process and gets refused, which is the single most common way a recyclable mattress becomes landfill in this city.

Pickup: twin $82, full $94, queen $103, king $114, box spring $92, set $143.

Screens and electronics

California classifies televisions and monitors as e-waste and keeps them out of household trash - leaded glass in older tube sets, mercury in some flat-panel backlights, circuit boards throughout. A recycling fee is charged on new screens at the point of sale to fund the state's recovery system.

They go to certified e-waste processors, who separate glass, metals, plastics and boards. Data-bearing devices are destroyed as part of that process, though you should still factory-reset your own things first - a smart TV holds streaming logins and network credentials.

Pickup: TV under 42 inches $62, 42 to 65 inches $68, 65 inches and up $73, computer monitor $58, box of electronics $77.

Anything with refrigerant

Refrigerators, freezers, window and portable AC units, outdoor condensers and dehumidifiers contain refrigerant in a sealed system. Federal rules require recovery by a certified technician before the unit can be crushed or landfilled; venting it is illegal. Compressor oil is handled separately, then the steel, aluminum and copper are recycled.

That recovery step is why these items are priced above an equally heavy piece of furniture - refrigerator $164, side-by-side $183, chest freezer $146, window AC $87 or $109, condenser $115 - and why leaving one out for a passing scrapper is the wrong move. Scrappers want the copper, not the compliance, and the unit still traces to your address.

Metal, wood and the ordinary stuff

Scrap metal has a real market and comes out of almost every load: bed frames, patio furniture, exercise equipment, appliance shells, filing cabinets. It is separated and sold by weight, which is the one part of this business that pays for itself.

Clean wood and untreated lumber can be chipped for mulch or biomass. Cardboard is recycled. Green waste from a yard clear goes to composting rather than landfill where a facility accepts it.

Then there is the honest remainder: soiled upholstery, mixed textiles, particleboard, laminates and the contents of most junk piles. That goes to landfill, because nothing else will take it. Anybody who tells you a household cleanout produces no landfill material is selling something.

What we cannot take, and where it goes

Household hazardous waste does not go on a junk truck: paint, solvents, thinner, motor oil, gasoline, propane cylinders, pool chemicals, pesticides, fertilizer, car batteries.

The county runs a household hazardous waste program for residents. Look up the current locations, hours and appointment rules for your address, because they vary across the county and they change. Set that material aside in one corner before a cleanout so it is not being sorted under time pressure.

This category is oversized in San Diego garages for a structural reason: no basements. The garage takes what a basement would take elsewhere, including eight cans of half-used paint in a color no longer on the house.

Why it matters more here

Two reasons that are specific to this county.

The canyons. San Diego is cut through by open canyon land that is reachable from a dead-end street in minutes, and everything in those drainages runs to a creek, the bay or the ocean without treatment. Material dumped on a canyon rim is a water-quality problem and, in dry brush before a Santa Ana week, a fire-fuel problem. It is why canyon groups and neighborhood reporting channels here are so active.

The cheap-quote trap. Disposal costs money. A quote below the cost of doing it properly means the load is going somewhere other than a facility - and when such a pile is investigated, investigators open it and look for a name. It will be yours.

Ask any hauler where material goes. A straight answer is the cheapest due diligence available.

Frequently asked questions