How to get rid of a mattress in Boulder, CO.

Companies that come to your home and carry the mattress out, so you need no vehicle. The prices below are starting prices unless stated — stairs, box springs and extra items add to them.

Most charities will not take a used mattress. These are the ones we checked, including the ones that say no.

• The Salvation Army (satruck.org): accepted-items list includes 'Mattresses' and beds; also says local ordinances and need vary by location and to call 1-800-SA-TRUCK to confirm what a local center accepts. Source
• Doesn’t take mattresses. Habitat for Humanity national ReStore guide: 'Mattresses and box springs are not accepted.' Source

Policies vary by branch. Call before you carry one over — we asked each of the big three directly: Goodwill, the Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity.

What we established about this city in particular — including where it runs nothing of its own and residents have to look elsewhere.

• CHaRM lists mattresses, box springs, and foam toppers, with item and facility fees. Multiple-piece box springs are charged as multiple units. Current policy excludes moldy or bed-bug-contaminated bedding. Source Not confirmed: Read the linked current fee schedule and distinguish per-item from per-visit fees. Not confirmed: Confirm facility access and any eligibility restrictions.
• Facility page describes a per-vehicle facility fee of $3. This is separate from item charges and must not be presented as the full mattress recycling price. Source Not confirmed: Combine current item and facility fees only after checking whether exceptions apply.
• Question 1 answered "no" for Boulder: the city runs no collection of any kind, so there is no municipal bulky-item or large-item pickup to book and no city mattress fee to quote. The Waste Services page states plainly, "The city does not provide municipal waste hauling." Residential collection is arranged by each household with a private waste hauler, and the city adds that it "does not determine or control rates, nor does the city dictate appropriate levels of service." A Boulder resident wanting a mattress taken from the curb is therefore asking their own subscription hauler, not the city, and there is no 311-style municipal booking route, no free annual allowance and no published city price. The page directs residents to a separate list of local waste haulers rather than naming any on this page. Source
• The city's own list of haulers providing regularly scheduled collection in Boulder names three companies serving residential addresses: Green Girl Recycling, 303-442-7535 (residential: recycling only); One Way, Inc., 303-823-0556 (residential: recycling, compostables, trash); and Western Disposal Services, 303-444-2037 (residential: recycling, compostables, trash). The list repeats that "The City of Boulder does not provide municipal waste hauling" and that the city does not control rates or service levels. Only two of the three offer trash service, so a Boulder household's practical choice for a bulky pickup is One Way or Western Disposal. No hauler's mattress or bulky-item rate is published on any city page. Source Not confirmed: Neither hauler publishes a mattress or bulky-item rate on a city page, and Western Disposal's own website (westerndisposal.com) refuses automated access with a bot block, so its published extra-item and mattress-recycling terms could not be read from the operator's own pages and no price is recorded here. Not confirmed: Whether One Way, Inc. collects mattresses at all, and on what terms, is not stated on any city page.
• Local rule that shapes every other answer in Boulder: the Universal Zero Waste Ordinance, codified at Boulder Revised Code 6-3-13, 6-3-14 and 6-3-15, requires all properties in the city — residential as well as commercial — to "Subscribe to compost, recycling and trash collection service" and to "Regularly provide renters with information on where bins are located." Businesses additionally must "Provide correctly placed collection containers," "Have required signs," and "Train employees on proper sorting." Residents who do not already have a hauler are told, "If you contract for trash services, contact a local waste hauler to sign up for recycling and compost collection services." So subscribing to a hauler is mandatory in Boulder even though the city provides none. Source Not confirmed: The page does not state whether a licensed hauler must include recycling and compost collection in the base trash price or may charge separately for them. Not confirmed: No penalty amount for non-subscription is published on this page.
• Question 5 for Boulder: the binding set-out rule is the Bear Protection Ordinance (Ordinance 8161, adopted 2017), which is stricter than an ordinary set-out window and applies to anything left out overnight, a bulky mattress set-out included where trash and compost carts go out with it. Anywhere in the city, "Bear-resistant containers are required if trash and compost are put out the night before pickup," and "Bear-resistant carts and recycling containers can be put out for collection after 8pm the night before pick-up anywhere in the city." West of Broadway and south of Sumac Avenue the rule is absolute: all compost and trash carts, containers, dumpsters or enclosures must be bear-resistant or stored inside a building, house, garage, shed or other enclosed structure until emptied. Fines are issued by code enforcement without a warning: $100 for the first offense, $250 for the second, $500 for the third, and failing to latch a container counts as a violation. Source Not confirmed: The ordinance page addresses trash and compost containers; it does not say how an unbagged bulky item such as a mattress, which cannot go in a bear-resistant cart, is to be set out overnight.
• Not an option: Refusal, and a useful one because Resource Central's Materials Reuse yard shares the 6400 Arapahoe Road site with the CHaRM and Boulder County's own city pages send reuse donations there. Resource Central takes donations free at 6400 Arapahoe Rd., Boulder, CO 80303, Monday-Saturday 9 a.m.-4 p.m. in the Donation Lane, and also runs a free pickup that must be prequalified through a Materials Reuse Donation Pickup Request form. But its furniture rule rules a mattress out: "We will accept non-upholstered furniture that is solid wood or of an antique nature. Furniture cannot include any cloth, fabric, textile, or absorbent material." A mattress is cloth and absorbent throughout, and no mattress, box spring or bedding appears anywhere in the accepted categories, which are reclaimed building materials and home improvement items. A resident arriving in the donation lane at 6400 Arapahoe with a mattress needs the CHaRM entrance at the same address instead, where it is a paid recycling drop-off. Source Not confirmed: Mattresses are excluded by the fabric-and-absorbent-material rule rather than named in a refusal list, so there is no sentence on the page using the word mattress.
• The city's own Waste Sorting 101 guide is where Boulder sends residents for a mattress, and it names exactly one destination: "The Eco-Cycle/City of Boulder Center for Hard-to-Recycle Materials (CHaRM) helps Boulder recycle what is otherwise un-recyclable," collecting "a variety of items that are not accepted in Boulder's curbside recycling bins, including electronics and appliances, plastic bags, mattresses, textiles and scrap metal." The city publishes no fee of its own and refers the reader onward: "Find a full list of accepted materials and recycling fees on Eco-Cycle's website." The guide names no city yard, transfer station or residents' drop-off day for bulky waste, because Boulder operates none. Source

• Resources page still labels its rate link 2023 Gate Rate Sheet, while the separate Disposal Rates page links a PDF explicitly titled 2026. Preserve the link-label discrepancy rather than interpreting every resource as current. Source
• CDPHE list of residential materials prohibited from Colorado solid waste sites: lead-acid batteries, free liquids, used oil, waste tires, electronic devices/computers. Mattresses not listed. No statewide mattress stewardship program or landfill ban found on CDPHE pages as of 2026-09-22; mattress disposal is handled by local governments. Source