How to get rid of a mattress in South Elgin, IL.

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 South Elgin and its neighbors.

• Not an option: Kane County runs two staffed, free-for-most-items recycling centers and neither of them takes a mattress. The County's own Recycling Centers page opens: "Kane County operates two 'electronics and more' recycling centers open Monday through Friday year-round. The sites are closed on most federal holidays. No appointments are necessary to visit us at: Fabyan Parkway between Geneva and Batavia (517 E. Fabyan Parkway...); West Dundee, through the rear gate of the Village Dept. of Public Works building (900 Angle Tarn...)." The published details are "Street Address: 517 E. Fabyan Parkway, Geneva, IL 60134", "Hours: Mon. - Fri., 8am-4pm - self-service kiosk for select items open 24/7/365", and "Street Address: 900 Angle Tarn, West Dundee, IL 60118 ... note, you will actually need to access the site gate from Beacon St., a turn off of Angle Tarn", "Hours: Mon.-Fri., 7am-3pm". Sites are "staffed by employees of eWorks, the County's contracted collection partner" and "Will someone help me unload? Yes - our sites are staffed and the attendant on duty will collect items from customers, including heavy/hard to manage items." The published acceptance lists are electronics, clothing/textiles/apparel, books and paper fibre, smoke and CO detectors, child car seats, strollers, high chairs and ride-in toy cars at both sites, plus, "Accepted at Fabyan Parkway Location Only", flattened corrugated cardboard, loose batteries, ink jet cartridges, dry art and school supplies, eyeglasses and hearing aids, multi-beverage holders, "Metal appliances (no refrigerant)", "Scrap metal", aerosol cans, small propane tanks and isobutane canisters. Mattresses and box springs appear on no list, accepted or fee-bearing; the fee schedule is confined to TVs and monitors ($25 under 21", $35 at 21" and over), smoke and CO alarms ($2), aerosols ($1.25), butane ($1), propane ($4), "Child car seats, strollers and plastic high chairs: $15 each" and ride-in toy cars ($10 manual, $20 battery), with the standing rule "All accepted items not listed below are free to recycle!" So the metal bed frame is a free weekday drop-off at Fabyan Parkway under "Scrap metal"; the mattress itself has no county door. The page states no residency test for either center — no proof of address, no Kane-only rule — and goes further in the other direction, telling businesses "May I drop off equipment associated with a business or office? Yes, though with some quantity limits" and "You will pay the same cost for TVs and Monitors as residents do". Source
• Not an option: Kane County's 2026 Green Guide states the refusal in its own words, twice, and it is the clearest county-level answer in this part of Illinois. The centers' "Materials Not Accepted for Recycling" paragraph reads: "The following items are not accepted at County Recycling Centers: items containing refrigerant, including fridges, freezers, ice makers, A/C units and dehumidifiers; exercise machines; light bulbs; wooden/particle board speakers; non-metal furniture; spiral-bound books; clothes or textiles that are dirty, wet, moldy or infested (stains that won't wash out are fine!); and CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes and other media items." The Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Directory's Furniture entry closes: "Worn-out and broken furniture generally goes in the trash — call your hauler (back cover) about bulk item pickup. Kane County Recycling Centers do not accept furniture other than fully metal items at the Fabyan Parkway location only." The clothing and textile program, which does take material "in both good and poor condition, including those that wouldn't normally be reused such as bedding and underwear, as long as everything is clean and dry", is the one place a bed-adjacent item is named — bedding, not the mattress. The Guide's own Mattresses & Box Springs entry (recorded separately) confirms there is no county drop-off. Note one internal inconsistency in the County's own wording: the Guide's Aerosol Cans entry calls Fabyan Parkway "our Batavia recycling center" while its Recycling Centers page heads the same address "517 E. Fabyan Parkway, Geneva" and the website calls it "Fabyan Parkway between Geneva and Batavia" — one site on the Geneva/Batavia line, not two. Source
• There is a working waste transfer station inside Elburn that Kane County arranges public access to, and the county's arrangement covers electronics only — worth knowing before anyone drives a mattress there. The County's Recycling Centers page says: "the waste management company LRS allows Kane County residents to drop off certain electronic devices at its transfer station in Elburn. Appointments are required for this site only." The published details are "Location: 1N138 Linlar Drive, Elburn, IL 60119", "Hours: M-F 8:30am-2:30pm", "Registration required before drop off for this location only", and the site "accepts the subset of electronic items that are covered by the Illinois Consumer Electronics Recycling Act: Cable boxes, Cell phones, Computers (laptop, desk top, tablet etc.), Computer cables, Computer keyboards, Computer mice, Digital converter boxes, DVD players, Fax machines, Computer monitors, Personal digital assistants, MP3 players, Printers, Satellite receivers, Scanners, Small-scale servers, Televisions, VCRs, Video game consoles." The Green Guide states the list is closed — "Accepted items are limited to only those covered by the state Consumer Electronics Recycling Act" — and that "Use of this site is not limited to LRS customers." TV and monitor fees "must be paid by phone for this site only" at 844-633-3577. No household waste, bulky item or mattress drop-off is offered to the public at this address by either the County or LRS. Source Not confirmed: LRS publishes no household or bulky-waste self-haul terms for the Elburn transfer station; the county's arrangement is explicitly limited to Consumer Electronics Recycling Act items, and whether LRS accepts a mattress there commercially is not published.
• Kane County holds eight or nine free public recycling events a year, most of them on weekends when the two centers are shut, and the published accepted-materials list for every one of them stops short of a mattress. The 2026 calendar as printed: "Feb. 28, The Big One: Shred and Recycle #1, 540 S. Randall Road, St. Charles, 8 a.m.-noon"; "April 4, 'Electronics and More' pop-up, North Aurora Police Department, 200 S. Lincolnway, North Aurora, 9 a.m.-noon"; "April 18, 'Electronics and More' pop-up @ Geneva Earth Day, Peck Farm Park, 4038 Kaneville Road, Geneva, 9 a.m.-noon"; "June 6, 'Electronics and More' pop-up, in front of Ace Hardware, 994 N. Lake St., Aurora, 9 a.m.-noon"; "Aug. 1, 'Electronics and More' pop-up, Village of South Elgin Department of Public Works, 1000 Bowes Road, South Elgin, 9 a.m.-noon"; "Aug. 29, The Big One: Shred and Recycle #2, 540 S. Randall Road, St. Charles, 8 a.m.-noon"; "Sept. 5, 'Electronics and More' pop-up, North Aurora Police Department, 200 S. Lincolnway, North Aurora, 9 a.m.-noon"; "Nov. 7, Pumpkin Smash & Recycle, Village of South Elgin Department of Public Works, 1000 Bowes Road, South Elgin, 9 a.m.-noon"; "Dec. 5, 'Electronics and More' pop-up, in front of Ace Hardware, 994 N. Lake St., Aurora, 9 a.m.-noon"; plus "November, general election campaign sign recycling — dates and locations TBD." What each takes is spelled out and it is the same short list — "electronics, clothing and textiles, books and paper, batteries" at the pop-ups, widening at the two St. Charles events to "confidential document shredding and recycling of electronics, clothing and textiles, books, Styrofoam, batteries, fluorescent bulbs/tubes and LED bulbs, aerosol cans, child care gear, small propane and helium tanks, smoke and CO alarms" (the August event adds bicycles). Event fees mirror the centers' — TVs and monitors $25 under 21" and $35 at 21" and over, smoke and CO alarms $2, aerosols $1.25, camp-size propane $4, small helium tanks $5, child care gear $10 — and then: "All other recycling and services are free of charge." Shredding is "free but limited to household document shredding needs of County residents (no business shredding)" with a "Quantity limit of one carload (~4 Bankers Boxes' worth) per household per event." No bulky-item, furniture or mattress amnesty day appears anywhere in the 2026 calendar. Source
• Kane County answers the mattress question directly in the 2026 Green Guide, and its answer has changed since the version its website still carries. The Guide's Reduce, Reuse, Recycle Directory entry reads in full: "Mattresses & Box Springs: A like-new item may be sold or given away online. Most thrift shops and charities do not take used mattresses. Companies that specialize in mattress collection for recycling include Bedder World (ABedderWorld.com, 720-263-6094) and Mattress Disposal Plus (MattressDisposalPlus.com, 877-708-8329). Nonspecialized junk removal companies will also collect mattresses and send them for recycling when possible. The least expensive disposal option is usually curbside disposal through your regular waste hauler (back cover). Call your hauler for details and requirements." That is a county of half a million people stating that it knows of no mattress drop-off at all, naming only collection companies and its residents' own curbside contracts. The County's separately maintained A-Z listing still carries the older answer, which named Verlo Mattress branches in West Dundee, Crystal Lake and Naperville and "The only known drop-off location for mattress recycling in the area is CPS Recycling at 1717 Elmhurst Rd. in Elk Grove Village" — an address roughly thirty miles east, in Cook County; the 2026 Guide drops both. Either way the county's conclusion is the same and is stated rather than inferred: nothing inside Kane County takes a mattress, and the county's own fallback is the hauler at the curb. Source
• Not an option: The first of the two furniture charities Kane County's own Green Guide sends residents to refuses mattresses in writing, and it does so on the page that otherwise offers free collection across the Fox Valley. Wayside Cross Ministries, whose warehouse the Guide lists as "Wayside Cross (215 E. New York St., Aurora)", states on its donating-goods page: "Wayside Cross Ministries does not accept used mattresses or box springs. We can only accept new, plastic-sealed mattresses directly from the manufacturer." Everything else about the offer is real and generous — drop-off at the warehouse donation center behind 215 E. New York St., Aurora, Monday through Saturday 9am-3:30pm, and a free pickup booked at 888-723-5730 which the ministry says covers "approximately 10-30 miles of the Aurora main campus in the greater Fox River Valley Chicagoland area, depending on truck availability" — a radius that reaches most of Kane and Kendall counties. That makes the refusal worth publishing rather than leaving unsaid: the truck that will come for the bedroom furniture will not take the bed. Source
• Not an option: The second furniture charity Kane County names refuses mattresses in one sentence, and it has a shop in Geneva as well as the Aurora warehouse the Guide lists. St. Vincent de Paul's Deja Vu stores, run by the Rockford Council, publish: "Please note that we no longer accept: mattresses, box springs, pianos, organs, TVs, entertainment centers, sleeper sofas, stuffed animals, and children's toys." The stores are "427 S. 4th Street, Geneva, Illinois 60134" (Monday-Saturday 10am-4pm, Sunday 9am-2pm mid-April through mid-November) and "911 Sullivan Road (entrance is on Eastwood Street), Aurora, IL 60506" (Wednesdays 12-4pm, Thursdays 2-6pm, Fridays 9am-3pm, Saturdays 9am-1pm) — the Aurora address being the "St. Vincent de Paul (911 Sullivan Road, Aurora)" the County's Green Guide lists under Furniture. Taken with Wayside Cross, both of the county's two named furniture donation routes are closed to mattresses in their own words, which is exactly what the Guide means when it says "Most thrift shops and charities do not take used mattresses." Source
• Kane County collects from the curb exactly once a year, for household hazardous waste, and a mattress is not in it. The 2026 Green Guide's "Home Collection (Eligible Areas)" panel reads: "What: Once-per-year free HHW collection. Eligibility: Residential Kane County addresses in any of the following municipalities: Algonquin, Batavia, Burlington, Carpentersville, East Dundee, Geneva, Gilberts, Hampshire, Huntley, Pingree Grove, Sleepy Hollow, South Elgin, West Dundee; Unincorporated addresses within the bounds of the following townships and SSA: Blackberry, Burlington, Dundee, Elgin, Hampshire, Plato, Rutland, Mill Creek SSA." Booking runs through Clean Harbors Environmental Services at 866-466-5060 and the accepted list is aerosols, antifreeze and auto fluids, car batteries, fertilisers, fire extinguishers, fluorescent bulbs and tubes, fuel, household cleaners, pesticides, propane tanks, mercury-containing items, motor oil, pool chemicals, solvents and strong acids and bases. There is no county bulky-waste, large-item or clean-up collection of any kind: the Guide's back cover instead lists "Curbside Waste Collection Contacts" town by town — Flood Brothers for East Dundee, Hampshire and Pingree Grove; Groot for Algonquin, Aurora, Batavia, North Aurora, Big Rock, Bartlett, Burlington, Carpentersville, Elgin Township, Sleepy Hollow, South Elgin and West Dundee; LRS for Blackberry Township, Campton Hills, Campton Township, Elburn, Elgin, Geneva, Kaneville, Mill Creek SSA, Montgomery, Plato Township, St. Charles, Sugar Grove and Virgil Township; MDC for Gilberts; and WM for Maple Park, Prestbury and Sun City by Del Webb. Every bulky route in Kane County is therefore a municipal hauler contract, not a county service. Source