How to get rid of a mattress in North Arlington, NJ.

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.

• North Arlington is a borough, and the striking thing about it is what the borough does not publish: its Trash & Recycling page hands every garbage question to a private hauler and sets out no bulk item rule of any kind. The page opens "For questions pertaining to garbage pickup, please call Cali Carting at 201-991-5400." and from there covers only recycling. Appliances are the one large-item route the borough runs itself: appliances containing Freon gas must be recycled, including refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners with doors removed, and other appliances include stoves, hot water heaters, washers and dryers; "Residents must call Recycling Coordinator, Mark Cunningham, at 201-991-6060 x310 for a scheduled pickup every Friday. Appointments should be made no later than 12 noon on the Thursday before." That is a tighter notice rule than any of the neighboring boroughs publish, but it reaches appliances, not bedding. Mandatory recycling covers newspapers, magazines, commingled glass, aluminum, tin and recyclable plastics, refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners, and grass and leaves, and the borough's recycling ordinance also requires residents to separate household batteries. Recycling containers should be 32 gallons or less, with no plastic bags on commingled weeks and material loose in an identifiable container marked recycling; residents can purchase barrels from Borough Hall at $10 a piece, which is a container charge and not a charge for a mattress. Electronics have their own route: effective January 1 residents can no longer put TV monitors, computer monitors and other electronic equipment out for garbage, and may drop any electronic equipment at the public works facility, which the page gives as "50 Disposal road", any time Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., where a dumpster is available; elderly or handicapped residents can call 201-955-5665 ext. 14 to schedule a pickup. Light bulbs and tubes, china and dishware and household pots and pans are not recyclable and go in the regular household garbage. Rechargeable batteries must go to a county household hazardous waste day and the page states the DPW does not accept that material; alkaline batteries can go in the regular garbage. Leaf season runs from on or around Monday, October 30th until Friday, December 8th, weather permitting. The Department of Public Works is given as 201-991-6060 ext. 310, at 50 Silkowski Road, North Arlington, NJ 07031, Monday through Friday 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., with Mark Cunningham as Superintendent and Recycling Coordinator; the borough's separate Public Works Department page lists the department's responsibilities as snow plowing, ice control, street sweeping, pot hole and road repair, municipal tree trimming and removals, sanitary sewer line maintenance, leaf removal, maintenance of municipal property and buildings and the motor pool, and does not list garbage, recycling or bulk collection among them. The borough publishes no bulk collection schedule, no bulk item allowance and no fee. Source Not confirmed: The borough publishes no bulk or bulky-waste collection rule at all: no schedule, no item allowance, no fee, no appointment line and no mention of a mattress or furniture anywhere on its Trash & Recycling page, which refers all garbage questions to the contracted hauler Cali Carting. Not confirmed: The borough's own code presumes "days designated for the collection of bulky items" exist, but no such days are published on the borough site, so when a mattress may lawfully be set out is not established. Not confirmed: Whether the hauler Cali Carting charges for a mattress, and whether the borough's contract with it covers bulk items at all, is not published by the borough. Not confirmed: The borough gives its public works facility as 50 Silkowski Road in its contact block and as "50 Disposal road" in the electronics paragraph, and the page does not reconcile the two. Not confirmed: The 2026 Recycling Schedule the page links is a scanned image with no text layer and could not be read, so any bulk or mattress line printed on the calendar itself is unestablished.
• North Arlington's code names a mattress directly and makes leaving one outside unlawful except on a bulky collection day - which is the clearest local rule in the borough, and it sits in the littering chapter rather than anywhere a resident would look. Chapter 221, Littering, was adopted July 12, 1988 by Ordinance No. 1431 as Chapter 128 of the 1984 Code. Its unlawful-acts section provides: "It shall be unlawful for any residential property owner to store or permit storage of any bulky household waste, including household appliances, furniture and mattresses, in areas zoned residential, except in a fully enclosed structure or during days designated for the collection of bulky items." A mattress is therefore either inside a fully enclosed structure or at the curb on a designated bulky collection day, and nowhere else - and the borough does not publish those designated days on its own website, so the ordinance commits residents to a timing rule the borough has not told them. The same section makes it unlawful "for any person to discard or dump long any street or road, on or off any right-of-way, any household or commercial solid waste, rubbish, refuse, junk, vehicle or vehicle parts, rubber tires, appliances, furniture or private property, except by written consent of the owner of said property, in any place not specifically designated for the purpose of solid waste storage or disposal", the misspelling of along being the code's own. Tires get a parallel rule, unlawful to store in residential areas except in a fully enclosed structure or on days designated for the collection of tires. The chapter also bars open or overflowing waste disposal bins on residential or commercial property. Penalties are not set in the chapter itself: as amended April 23, 1991 by Ordinance No. 1527, any person, firm, corporation or association violating the chapter, whether as principal, agent or employee of another, "shall be punishable as provided in Chapter 1, Article I, General Penalty", and if the violation is of a continuing nature each day during which it continues constitutes a separate and distinct offense. Separately, the borough's recycling chapter, Chapter 281, adopted August 7, 1990 by Ordinance No. 1496, requires that white goods be placed at the curb for collection "only after special arrangements for their pickup by the Borough have first been made in person or by telephone or the mails with the Department of Public Works Superintendent", and imposes the same arrangement rule on ferrous scrap; neither provision reaches bedding. Both chapters were read on eCode360 pages whose own titles confirm the municipality, "Chapter 221: Littering - Borough of North Arlington, NJ" and "Chapter 281: Recycling - Borough of North Arlington, NJ". Source Not confirmed: Chapter 221 makes storage of a mattress lawful only "during days designated for the collection of bulky items" but neither the chapter nor the borough's website says which days those are or who designates them. Not confirmed: The penalty is referred out to Chapter 1, Article I, General Penalty, which was not read, so the fine for leaving a mattress out on a non-collection day is not established. Not confirmed: Neither Chapter 221 nor Chapter 281 establishes a bulky waste collection program, allowance or fee; no chapter setting one was found in the borough's code.

• NJDEP County/Municipal Recycling Coordinator Locator lists municipal (updated August 2026) and county (updated July 2026) coordinator contacts. No statewide mattress stewardship program or landfill ban found on NJDEP pages as of 2026-09-22; mattress collection is handled by counties/municipalities. Source