How to get rid of a mattress in Galion, OH.

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.

• Galion runs no trash collection of its own. The city's Services page is the index of everything the city offers residents, and the complete list is Alerts, Leaf Collection, City Zoning & Planning, Economic Development, City Fee Schedule, Food Service Fees, Job Openings and Taylor Road Composting. Refuse, garbage, trash, bulk items and recycling appear nowhere on it, and the city's only two waste-adjacent services are seasonal leaf collection and a yard waste composting site. The city's Utility Rates page confirms the same boundary from the billing side: "City Council sets electric and sewer rates by ordinance, and water rates are set by the Safety-Service Director", and no refuse rate is set by anyone - Galion bills electric, water and sewer, not trash. So a Galion household arranges collection with a hauler registered with the city and pays that hauler's price. The city is at 301 Harding Way East, Galion, OH 44833, open Monday through Friday, 8:00am to 4:00pm, main number 419-468-1857, Utility Office 419-468-6611. Galion straddles Crawford, Richland and Morrow counties; the city sits in Crawford County and the city itself publishes no county solid waste district affiliation on these pages. Source Not confirmed: The city does not publish the list of haulers registered under Section 719.02 to collect in Galion, so a resident cannot compare them from the city's own pages. Not confirmed: The City Fee Schedule page linked from the Services index returned no content when read, so whether it contains a hauler license fee or any refuse-related charge is not established. Not confirmed: Because there is no municipal program, the city publishes no mattress price, bulk-item allowance or booking procedure of its own.
• Not an option: Galion's only city-run drop-off takes yard waste and nothing else, so it is not an answer for a mattress. The Taylor Road Composting Facility is at 545 Taylor Road in Galion and "is open the third FULL weekend of every month, March through November", with hours of 7:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. What it takes is narrow: "Yard waste, including limbs, brush, grass clippings and leaves, will be accepted free of charge from City of Galion and Polk Township residents." The exclusions are listed as "construction debris, pallets, lumber, stones, and concrete", and bedding and furniture are not within the accepted category of yard waste in the first place. Mulched material is available free of charge to residents during open hours when available. The city published its 2026 dates as March 20 and 21, April 17 and 18, May 15 and 16, June 19 and 20, July 17 and 18, August 21 and 22, September 18 and 19, October 16 and 17, and November 20 and 21. Eligibility is limited to City of Galion and Polk Township residents. A reader who hears that Galion has a free city drop-off should know it is a compost yard: a mattress has to go somewhere else. Source Not confirmed: The page does not state a proof-of-residency procedure, so how City of Galion and Polk Township residency is checked at the gate is not established.
• Galion licenses its haulers annually and expressly lets a resident haul their own waste, which is the lawful route for a mattress in a town with no city collection. Codified Ordinances Section 719.02(a) provides that "All solid waste that has accumulated within the City of Galion shall be collected, conveyed, and disposed of only by persons who have registered with the office of the Safety-Service Director pursuant to the regulations contained in this section", and then carves out the household: "This restriction shall not prohibit the actual procedures of such solid waste, or the owners or occupants of premises wherein or whereupon it was produced, from personally collecting, conveying and disposing of said waste, provided said activities are conducted in full compliance with all applicable state and local codes." So a Galion resident may legally take a mattress to a disposal site themselves. For anyone collecting commercially the terms are strict: registration must happen "not later than thirty (30) days prior to the proposed initiation of said activities", "Registration shall take place annually", registrations "shall be accompanied by an annual license fee as established from time to time by the Galion City Council", and registrants must show current commercial motor vehicle liability insurance of not less than $25,000 per person, $25,000 per accident and $25,000 for property damage, with ten days' written notice to the City before any cancellation. Registration "is not transferable from one person to another." The chapter is Chapter 719, Collection of Garbage, Solid Waste and Other Discarded Materials. The published code is the 2024-01 supplement. Source Not confirmed: The annual hauler license fee is set by Council resolution from time to time rather than in the code, and no current figure was found, so the fee is not established. Not confirmed: The chapter does not say which disposal sites a self-hauling resident may use, and it names no site that accepts a mattress.
• Galion sets a precise curbside window and a container requirement a mattress cannot satisfy. Codified Ordinances Section 719.07(c) provides: "Containers within which solid waste has been deposited may be placed at or upon the curb for curbside collection no earlier than 6:00 p.m. on the evening prior to the scheduled collection of said materials. Any materials and containers that remain after collection shall be removed from the curb no later than 8:00 p.m. on the date of collection." Subsection (b) sets the storage standard: "All solid waste which is stored or kept any place outside of a fully enclosed structure shall be placed within a plastic or non-corrosive metal can which is watertight, rustproof, and easily handled, with a tight-fitting lid which shall be removed only when necessary for the deposit or removal of material." The chapter grants no bulk or oversized-item exception to that, so as with Shelby the ordinance text leaves no stated compliant way to put a mattress out. Subsection (a) settles who owns what once it reaches the curb: "All solid waste placed at or upon a curb for collection shall become the property of the licensed solid waste hauler charged with responsibility for collecting and conveying same, and no person other than said hauler or his/her authorized agents and employees shall collect or remove same" - though the occupant of the premises where the waste was produced may take back anything they put out before the hauler begins collection. Section 719.06 restricts collection vehicles to city streets and off alleys except commercial alleys shown on the City Street Map, and keeps vehicles over 10,000 pounds gross vehicle weight off substandard local streets. Sections 719.06 and 719.07 were adopted by Ordinance 2019-64, passed October 8, 2019. Source Not confirmed: The chapter does not say how a resident may lawfully set out an item that cannot be placed in a covered can, and Section 719.07 never uses the word mattress or furniture. Not confirmed: The scheduled collection time the 6:00 p.m. window runs from comes from the resident's own hauler, not from the city, which publishes no collection schedule.
• Galion's refuse penalties escalate daily, and it separately protects set-out recyclables with a much heavier fine schedule. Codified Ordinances Section 719.99 provides: "Whoever violates any provisions of this chapter is guilty of a minor misdemeanor on the first offense, and on each subsequent offense such person is guilty of a fourth degree misdemeanor. A separate offense shall be deemed committed each day during or on which a violation occurs or continues. The prosecution for a violation of this chapter shall always be for a first offense unless the affidavit upon which the prosecution is instituted contains the allegation that the offense is a subsequent offense." Because it applies to any provision of Chapter 719, it reaches the 6:00 p.m. set-out window and the covered-can requirement in Section 719.07 as well as the hauler registration duty in Section 719.02. Section 719.09 then carries its own, stiffer schedule for taking recyclables that someone else has set out: once properly separated recyclable waste material is placed at a designated recycling collection location it "shall become the property of the authorized recycling contractor", no one other than that contractor may remove it, and "Whoever violates this section shall be guilty of an unclassified misdemeanor and fined not more than two hundred fifty dollars ($250.00) for a first offense, fined not more than five hundred dollars ($500.00) for a second offense within a period of two years, and fined not more than one thousand dollars ($1,000) for third and subsequent offense(s) within a period of two years. Each unauthorized collection shall constitute a separate and distinct offense." The section defines a designated recycling collection location to include the curbside where curbside recycling is offered, and defines curbside as "the area between the edge of the pavement and the sidewalk, the area of five feet adjacent to the edge of the paved street or alley if there is no sidewalk." Both sections were adopted by Ordinance 2019-64, passed October 8, 2019. Source Not confirmed: Section 719.99 states misdemeanor degrees rather than dollar amounts for refuse violations, and no Galion fine schedule for them was found, so the amount a resident would pay is not established.

• Primary names Harvard Avenue Transfer Station at 3227 Harvard Ave, Newburgh Heights OH 44105; district calls it Harvard Road at 3227 Harvard Road. Same number, city and operator support an identity candidate, but street suffix discrepancy retained. Source
• Hamilton municipal FAQ says transfer-station large-item intake Monday–Saturday. Existing Rumpke operator-locator staging record 07c7c0690194a830d775d57e lists Monday–Friday 8am–3:45pm at the same 1000 N Third Street address and phone 513-867-8661. This is an hours discrepancy, not grounds to merge unrelated branches. Source
• Ohio EPA Solid Waste Management District Locator (GIS app): select a county to see its Solid Waste Management District; the underlying layer covers all 88 counties. SWMDs are the local contact for recycling and disposal. Source
• Ohio EPA's "Where to Recycle" page names the three statewide tools it offers residents: the Ohio EPA Recycling Directory (a searchable directory of service providers who volunteered to be listed), the solid waste management district locator map, and the Ohio Materials Marketplace for businesses. It states that recycling and litter prevention activities are controlled locally through the county's solid waste management district, which "can help with information such as ... where to take hard to recycle items". Note the agency site now serves these pages under the /wps/portal/gov/epa/ path; the bare /divisions-and-offices/... URLs 404 when requested directly. Source
• The Ohio EPA Recycling Directory is hosted on RecycleSearch (Re-TRAC) and is searchable by free text or by pre-set material categories after setting a location. Its own text says results may include curbside recycling programs, drop-off recycling locations, reuse stores and other service providers, and that listing is not an endorsement. Its FAQ states the directory "is in the process of being populated" and that some areas of the state may have no information available, directing residents to their local solid waste management district instead. Listings are managed by Ohio EPA and the districts. Source
• No statewide mattress stewardship program or landfill ban found on Ohio EPA pages as of 2026-09-22; mattress disposal is handled by local governments and county solid waste management districts. The agency's own site search for "mattress" returns only 4 resources, none of them mattress-related (Revised Total Coliform Rule, Underground Injection Control, operator exam information and a Trauma Scene Clean-Up fact sheet). The Materials and Waste Management division pages cover solid waste, infectious waste, scrap tires and C&DD, with no mattress or bulky-item program. Source
• Mattress Recycling Council's Program States page names exactly four program states — California, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Oregon. Ohio is not among them, confirming there is no MRC-run mattress stewardship program or Bye Bye Mattress free drop-off network in Ohio. Source