How to get rid of a mattress in Southside, AL.

If you are replacing the mattress, the shop will often take the old one when they deliver. Usually one old mattress per new one, and only if it is dry and clean.

Casper

Free

Casper mattress order with In-Home Delivery & Setup ($249), continental US; one used mattress per mattress ordered. Sanitary condition judged on site; box springs must be removable intact. Source

Havertys

Free

New mattress delivered by Top Drawer Delivery. Not stated on page. Source

Purple

Free

Non-California: free with Rejuvenate mattresses; $200 add-on for select Essentials/Restore mattresses. Mattress only (no box springs); unsanitary mattresses may be refused. Source

Raymour & Flanigan

Free

New mattress purchase with delivery; free with mattress set of $500+. Safe, sanitary, free of rips and tears. Source

Rooms To Go

Free

New mattress with full service delivery. Not heavily soiled; not with Doorway Delivery. Source

Established for the county as a whole, so it applies across Southside and its neighbors.

• The nearest ReStore to the Etowah County towns is Gadsden Habitat for Humanity's, at "3225 Rainbow Drive Suite 248, Rainbow City, AL 35906", open Tuesday through Friday 10:00 am – 5:00 pm and Saturday 10:00 am – 4:00 pm, closed Sunday and Monday, store number 256-467-3719 and office 256-543-1898. The affiliate advertises that "We make it easy to donate large and multiple items" and offers a free donation pickup. What it does not publish anywhere on its site is a list of what it will and will not take: there is no accepted-items page and no not-accepted list, and mattresses, bedding and box springs are named nowhere. That is recorded here so the next pass does not have to look again, not as an indication either way. Source Not confirmed: Gadsden Habitat publishes no donation acceptance policy at all, so whether the ReStore takes a used mattress cannot be established from its own site.
• The one municipal solid waste landfill inside Etowah County will not take a load a household unloads by hand, which rules it out for a single mattress in the back of a pickup. Meridian Waste's own facility page for "Meridian Waste - Noble Hill Landfill" gives the location as "300 Noble Hill Rd / Attalla, AL 35954", phone "256-960-7426", and hours "Mon - Fri: 6:00 am - 4:00 pm CST" with "Weekends: CLOSED". It then says: "The Meridian Waste Noble Hill Landfill accepts household garbage, construction and demolition debris, and certain non-hazardous industrial wastes. Please be advised that all customers must have automated dumping capabilities as we currently do not accept loads that must be manually unloaded by hand." That last sentence is the operative one for a resident: a car boot or a pickup bed that has to be emptied by hand is not an accepted load. The page publishes no gate rate of any kind, and no per-item or bulky-waste fee. This is the Noble Hill Landfill in Attalla, ETOWAH COUNTY, ALABAMA — the address and the Alabama state code on the page confirm it, and Etowah County's own solid waste plan places it at the same address. Source Not confirmed: Noble Hill publishes no tipping fee, no minimum charge and no per-item bulky rate on its own page, so what a load would cost there cannot be established. Not confirmed: The 'automated dumping capabilities' sentence is not further defined — whether a trailer that tips would qualify is not stated.
• Etowah County owns no landfill and no transfer station of its own. Its own Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan 2024–2034 (dated May 2, 2024) names every facility that actually receives the county's waste and every one of them belongs to a company or to the City of Gadsden. "Noble Hill Landfill (Permit No. 28-08) ... is owned and operated by Evergreen Environmental Partners, LLC. This landfill is located at 300 Noble Hill Road in Attalla, Etowah County". "The City of Gadsden Transfer Station is located at 110 Burnsway Drive in Gadsden, Alabama." "The Gadsden C/D Landfill is owned and operated by the City of Gadsden, Alabama. This landfill is located at 110 Burnsway Drive in Gadsden" and is "permitted to accept nonhazardous and nonputrescible construction and demolition waste and rubbish" — a construction-and-demolition permit, not a household one. Two further landfills take Etowah County waste from outside the county: "Sand Valley Landfill ... located at 3345 County Road 209, Collinsville, Dekalb County" and "Three Corners Regional Landfill ... located at 2205 County Road 6, Piedmont, Cherokee County". The plan also records a second transfer station in use: "Republic Services, Inc. - Marshall County Transfer Station ... located at 224 Rives Road in Albertville, Alabama." Nowhere in the plan is a county-run drop-off site, convenience center or citizens' disposal point described, and nowhere is a household gate rate published. Source Not confirmed: The plan is a planning document and publishes no gate rates, no opening hours for public self-haul and no residency rules for any of these facilities. Not confirmed: Whether the City of Gadsden Transfer Station accepts self-haul from the public, and at what price, is not stated in the plan; that is a City of Gadsden question.
• Etowah County runs household collection only outside the towns, through a contractor, and it runs a bulky waste collection four times a year. The county's own plan: "Unincorporated Etowah County consists of approximately 403.5 square miles and has an estimated 2024 population of 30,155. Arrow Disposal Services, Inc. (Arrow Disposal) provides residential, commercial, governmental, and industrial waste collection services to the unincorporated areas of Etowah County. This waste is taken to the Noble Hill Landfill facility. Etowah County provides bulky waste collection four-times each year at four sites around the County. The waste is collected in roll-off dumpsters and disposed at Noble Hill Landfill. No recycling programs were reported." Section 6.3 repeats it: "The Town of Altoona, City of Attalla, City of Gadsden, City of Glencoe, Rainbow City, and Etowah County Commission provide bulky/yard waste collection ... Etowah County provides bulky waste collection four-times each year at four sites around the County." The eligibility line matters for this county's four page-getting towns. Gadsden collects for itself: "The City of Gadsden's Sanitation Division of the Public Works Department provides curbside solid waste collection service for residential customers". Rainbow City contracts its own: "The City provides residential solid waste collection to its citizens through a contract with Republic Services ... The City also conducts weekly bulky waste collection". Glencoe contracts Waste Management. Attalla contracts "Arrow Disposal Services, Inc. ... The City also conducts weekly bulky waste collection and as-needed yard waste collection." Southside runs its own: "The City of Southside provides a curbside solid waste collection service for residential customers once each week ... Southside also collects a small amount of C&D waste that is mixed with the large item pickup service that is offered to residents only." So five of the five towns on our list have a collection of their own, and the county's own contractor program is for the unincorporated area. Source Not confirmed: The plan does not say whether the county's four-times-a-year bulky drop-off sites are open to residents of the incorporated towns or only to the county's own collection customers. Not confirmed: The plan publishes no subscription price for the unincorporated-area collection and no fee for the bulky waste sites. Not confirmed: The plan names Arrow Disposal Services as the unincorporated-area contractor as of May 2024; Meridian Waste now publishes the Etowah County collection guidelines under the Meridian Waste/ADSI name, and the plan has not been updated to reflect that.
• The most useful thing published for Etowah County is a quarterly bulky-waste drop-off that names a mattress as an accepted item. Meridian Waste's "Etowah County Collection Guidelines", marked "Update 2024-A", sets out the weekly service as cart-only — "Materials: All waste materials must be BAGGED and contained INSIDE your 95-gallon Meridian Waste/ADSI cart", "Materials Accepted: Containerized, non-hazardous municipal solid waste" — and then, under the heading "Bulky Waste Drop-Off", states: "Drop-off locations for bulky items are available on the 1st Saturdays of February, May, August, and November." • "Hours: 8:00 AM – Noon" • "Materials Accepted: Yard & House Furniture (e.g., Mattresses, Carpet, Fencing, Toilets, Sinks, and Large Household Furnishings)." • "Non-Acceptable Items: Including (but not exclusive to) Tires, Batteries, Motor Oil, Medical Waste, Appliances with Freon, & Household Hazardous Waste." • "Locations: Gaston High School, Horton Bend Fire Department, Sardis Rd., and intersection of AL Hwy 132 & US Hwy 278 in Attalla." A mattress is named on the accepted side, not the excluded side — the opposite of the usual result. This is the same four-sites, four-times-a-year program Etowah County's own solid waste plan describes. The document is headed "Etowah County" and points to "MeridianWaste.com/EtowahCoAL", so it is Etowah County, Alabama, not any other county of that name. Note that the guidelines are the guidelines for Meridian Waste/ADSI collection customers in Etowah County: "Meridian Waste is proud to be your environmental services provider!" and "Collection fees are billed quarterly in advance and payment is to be made directly to Meridian Waste." Source Not confirmed: No street addresses are published for the four drop-off sites — only 'Gaston High School, Horton Bend Fire Department, Sardis Rd., and intersection of AL Hwy 132 & US Hwy 278 in Attalla'. Not confirmed: No separate fee is stated for the bulky drop-off, and no statement that it is free; the only money on the document is the quarterly collection fee, whose amount is not published either. Not confirmed: The guidelines do not say whether someone who is not a Meridian Waste/ADSI collection customer — a Gadsden, Rainbow City, Glencoe or Southside household served by their own city — may use these sites. Not confirmed: No limit is published on how many items or how many mattresses one household may bring.
• There is no mattress recycling program covering Etowah County, because there is none covering Alabama. The Mattress Recycling Council, which runs the only statewide mattress recycling programs in the United States, says on its own site that it is "Operating Statewide in California, Connecticut, Oregon and Rhode Island", and explains that it was "formed by the mattress industry to operate recycling programs in states that have passed mattress recycling laws". Alabama has passed no such law and appears nowhere on the page. Consistent with that, Etowah County's own solid waste management plan records no mattress recycler and no recycling program of any kind for the unincorporated county — "No recycling programs were reported" — and the recycling it does describe, the City of Gadsden's center at 306 Henry Street and its cardboard trailers, is for containers and cardboard. Source Not confirmed: The absence of a statewide program does not by itself exclude a private mattress recycler operating locally; none was found publishing an address and terms in this county.