How to get rid of a mattress in Cahokia Heights, IL.

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.

• Cahokia Heights publishes no household waste service of any kind, and the absence is complete rather than accidental. The city's own home page organizes everything it offers under "Cahokia Heights Services & Information" as four tiles - "Pay Bills - Pay water and sewer bill online for the city of Cahokia Heights, Illinois", "Licenses & Permits - Information about doing business in the City of Cahokia Heights, Illinois", "St. Louis Downtown Airport", "Parks & Recreation" and "Jobs/Careers" - and its navigation lists City Govt, Departments (Code Enforcement, Police, Fire, Water & Sewer, Parks, Streets & Demolition, Economic Development, Environmental), City Services (Business Services, Human Resources, Finance, Emergency Management), Community Highlights and News/Events. The only utility the city bills for is water and sewer. There is no garbage page, no hauler named, no collection day, no bulk or large item pickup, no clean-up day and no drop-off site. Cahokia Heights was created in 2021 from Cahokia, Alorton and Centreville, and its site carries no refuse arrangement inherited from any of them. Source Not confirmed: The city publishes no hauler name, no refuse charge and no collection schedule, so whether Cahokia Heights households are on a city-contracted service, individual subscriptions, or neither, could not be established from any primary source. Not confirmed: No Cahokia Heights municipal code is published online - the city is not on Municode or American Legal - so the ordinance rules on refuse containers, set-out and illegal dumping for this city could not be read at all.
• Cahokia Heights has a whole department whose stated purpose is the dumping problem, and it is the closest the city comes to publishing a waste policy - but it collects litter, not household bulk. The Environmental Department, run by Director Erma Millard from 4821 Bond Ave., Cahokia Heights, IL 62206 at 618.332.4258, states its mission in its own words: "To educate and change the mindset of citizens and visitors that negatively impact our community by dumping trash, in our city. We also want to showcase the City of Cahokia Heights beauty." What it actually does is bounded: "Litter and debris are picked up along the City of Cahokia Heights maintained roadways and city maintained properties. If litter or debris is on private property, removal is the responsibility of the property owner." It describes what it is up against: "The illegal dumping of trash along city roads ranges from paper, soda cans and coffee cups, fast food containers to old refrigerators and construction debris. All this trash must be collected and disposed of in order to maintain a livable community for a healthy and clean environment." So the department will clear a dumped mattress from a city street at public expense, and will not clear one from a resident's yard or curb, and offers no route by which a resident can hand one over. The Assistant Director is Anthony LeFlore; the department mailbox is environmental@cahokiaillinois.org. Source Not confirmed: The department publishes no request form, no scheduled pickup, no fee and no eligibility rule; there is no published way for a resident to ask it to take a large item. Not confirmed: The page's Documents section is empty on the live site, so any policy documents it once carried are not available.
• The other department a resident might reasonably call about a mattress in Cahokia Heights does streets and storm drains and says so. The Streets & Demolition Department, at 725 South 50th Street, Cahokia Heights, IL 62206, open Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at 618.332.4258 with an after-hours line of 618.744.1270, states: "Our MISSION is to maintain City of Cahokia Heights streets in order to provide safe and convenient travel, as well as maintaining storm drains and open ditches." It maintains "over 117 miles of streets" and "over 325 miles of storm drains and open ditches" across 9.4 square miles. The rest of the page is the city's NPDES MS4 stormwater management program - public education, volunteer storm drain clean-ups and illicit discharge reduction, with a Storm Water Management Hotline at (618) 825-2690. Refuse collection, bulk pickup and drop-off appear nowhere in the department's remit. Directors are Corey Allen (Demolition) and Keith Nolden (Streets), with Thomas Hill as Assistant Director; the department mailbox is streets@cahokiaheightsil.us. Source Not confirmed: The department's volunteer storm drain clean-ups are described but not scheduled, and the page does not say whether they accept household items.
• Cahokia Heights enforces a municipal code it does not publish, which is why the local rules on a mattress at the curb cannot be quoted here. The Department of Code Enforcement, run by Director Steven Brown from 4300 Bond Ave., Cahokia Heights, IL 62207 at 618.337.9517, says "The function of this department is to enforce the City of Cahokia Heights Municipal Code, particularly as it relates to land use and property maintenance" and that the officer "concentrates on the investigation and abatement of complaints involving land use, housing conditions, abandoned vehicles, signs, fences, and general public nuisances", responding to violations "regarding property maintenance, zoning regulations, permitting, Floodplain concerns, Building Regulations, and health code issues". The department publishes a Code Compliance Complaint Form, permit applications and a fee schedule, and links to Code Enforcement Notices - but it publishes no text of the municipal code itself and no link to a code library. Hours are Monday through Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Source Not confirmed: No text of the Cahokia Heights Municipal Code is published by the city or by any code publisher, so the set-out window, container rule, wrapping requirement and dumping penalty that apply in this city could not be read. Not confirmed: The city's Code Enforcement Notices page is empty, so no enforcement pattern could be established either.
• The one fee schedule Cahokia Heights does publish confirms the gap rather than closing it: the city sets prices for permits and for nothing to do with waste. The Code Enforcement Department's three-page "NEW FEE SCHEDULE" lists yard sale $5.00; electric permits $75.00 to $350.00 by amperage; storm damage related electric $35.00; pre-electric inspection request $35.00; residential inspections $75.00; commercial inspections $100.00; electrical test fee $25.00; fence permit $25.00; demolition permit $75.00 residential and $125.00 commercial; flood letters $25.00; zoning letters $25.00; occupancy permits $100.00; utility work permit $50.00; re-write occupancy permit $25.00; update occupancy permit $5.00; roof permit $75.00 residential and $125.00 commercial; general construction permit $100.00; new house permit $175.00; new garage permit $100.00 without electric and $175.00 with; shed permit $45; paving, filling, grading $50.00 residential and $100.00 commercial; fire rehab $150.00 residential and $200.00 to $1,500.00 commercial by square footage; carports $35.00; decks $45.00; plan review fees $75.00; and cell tower fees from $175.00. There is no refuse charge, no bulk item fee, no dumping fine and no clean-up or disposal charge anywhere in the schedule. Source Not confirmed: The schedule is dated February 2024 and sets no penalty amounts, so the fine for illegal dumping in Cahokia Heights is not published anywhere the city controls.
• With no city collection and no city code to read, a Cahokia Heights resident's only published route for a mattress is to drive it to a landfill, and St. Clair County names the two that exist. The Health Department's Pollution Prevention page - which runs the county's IEPA-delegated landfill monitoring program - tells residents "Contact your City Hall or Village Hall to find out if they offer trash service in your area. Otherwise you may have to contract with a private hauler for weekly trash pick up", and then states the acceptance rule: "Illinois landfills will not accept tires, white goods (water heaters, refrigerators etc.), household hazardous wastes or liquid paint. If you are unsure if your item will be accepted please contact the landfill to inquire before dropping it off." Mattresses are not on that refusal list. The nearer of the two named sites is "Milam Recycling & Disposal Facility, 601 Madison Road, East St. Louis, IL 62201, Hours: Mon.-Fri. 3 am- 5pm, Sat. 5 am- 12pm, (618) 271-6788", a few miles north of Cahokia Heights; the other is "Cottonwood Hills Recycling & Disposal Facility, 10400 Hillstown Road, Marissa, IL 62257, Hours: Mon.-Fri. 5 am-4 pm, (618) 295-2809", about thirty miles south-east. Dumping complaints go to the Health Department at (618) 233-7769. Source Not confirmed: Neither landfill publishes a gate rate, a minimum load charge or a mattress price, so the cost is not established. Not confirmed: Neither the county nor the operator publishes a proof-of-residency or county-of-origin rule for these sites.

• Residential body says Saturday 8–2; same-page footer says 9–1. Both show weekdays 8–4. No Saturday schedule selected. Source
• Locator retains Landfill 33 Saturday 7 a.m.–11 p.m. exactly as printed; implausible closing time requires confirmation. Two Columbus District Office cards are distinct OH and IN addresses, not duplicates. Source
• Illinois EPA recycling page offers a 'Beyond The Bin' ArcGIS map of recycling locations, an Earth911 ZIP locator and the Recycle Coach app (statewide partnership since 2025). No mattress stewardship program mentioned. No statewide mattress stewardship program or landfill ban found on Illinois EPA pages as of 2026-09-22; mattress disposal is handled by local governments. Source
• There is no state mattress recycling program in Illinois, and the absence is worth stating plainly because the four states that have one give residents free drop-off. The Mattress Recycling Council, which runs the Bye Bye Mattress collection network, lists its programs on its own Programs page as operating in California, Connecticut, Oregon and Rhode Island. Illinois is not among them. Three things follow for an Illinois resident: no recycling fee is charged on an Illinois mattress sale, there is no MRC-funded free drop-off anywhere in the state, and nothing obliges a retailer, hauler or municipality to recycle a mattress rather than landfill it. Recycling in Illinois is therefore a private arrangement wherever it exists at all — the drop-offs and recyclers listed on this page are businesses and charities choosing to do it, not a program a resident is entitled to. Source