How to get rid of a mattress in Salem, 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.

• Salem, Ohio - the Columbiana County city of about 11,700, City Hall at 231 South Broadway Avenue and the code's address of record 166 N. Union Ave, Salem, Ohio 44460; not Salem, Oregon, Massachusetts, New Hampshire or Virginia, and distinct from Salem Township - runs no refuse collection and no refuse billing. Its Utilities Department, overseen by a three-member Utilities Commission under Ohio R.C. 735.03 with Chad Hess as Utilities Superintendent, reachable at 330-337-8723, covers water and wastewater only: the department's own page lists a water treatment plant, a wastewater treatment plant, water distribution, a Water/Sewer Service Application Packet, backflow prevention and a FirstEnergy street light reporting link, and nothing else. The city's codified ordinances confirm the absence structurally. Part Nine, the Streets, Utilities and Public Services Code, contains chapters on Sidewalks, Streets, Weeds, Shade Trees, Sewers, Water, Cemeteries, Indigent Burials, Parks, the Reservoir Recreational Area and Excavations - and no garbage, refuse or solid waste chapter at all, with the Littering chapter instead cross-referencing the state's enabling statutes at Ohio R.C. 715.43 and 717.01. The city's services pages run to Adopt A Street, Leaf Collection, Recycling, Snow Removal and Yard and Garage Sales; there is no trash page. The single trash entry in the 2025 Citywide Fee Schedule is a code-enforcement charge rather than a service: under Housing, "Trash Removal $100.00 plus cost to remove", listed beside "Mowing $100.00 plus cost to mow (min. $200)" - what the city bills an owner when it abates an accumulation, not what a household pays to have a mattress taken. So Salem publishes no municipal collection, no bulk item allowance, no clean-up day and no city price for a mattress; a Salem household's collection comes from a private hauler of its own choosing. Code current through April 21, 2026. Source Not confirmed: Salem publishes no list of the private haulers serving the city and no licensing chapter for them, so a resident cannot tell from the city which companies collect there or on what terms. Not confirmed: No hauler's bulk item allowance, per-item mattress charge, notice period or wrapping rule is published by the city, so the cost of having a mattress collected in Salem is not established. Not confirmed: Council has in the past considered moving Salem to a single-hauler system; the city publishes no outcome, and no single-hauler contract appears on its site or in its code.
• Not an option: Salem runs a free recycling drop-off for its own residents and refuses mattresses there by name, which saves a wasted trip to the one city facility a resident would think to try. The center sits "next to the Salem Fire Department which is located on South Ellsworth Avenue", with "One-Way entry into the recycling center is from Filbert Street", holds "22 containers for recyclable items", is under video surveillance, and the containers are provided by the Carroll-Columbiana-Harrison Solid Waste District. Eligibility and price are stated together: "The service is free for Salem residents." Residents are told "Do not place anything outside the recycling containers." What it takes is five material streams: "Aluminum & metal cans - washed out", "Plastic containers - washed out", "Corrugated containers when empty, broken down flat", "Cardboard containers when empty, broken down flat", "Office paper, newspaper" and "Glass bottles & jars - washed out". What it will not take is given under the heading "Non-recyclable items at the recycling center include", introduced as "Any item not specifically listed above, further excluding, but not limited to:" and then itemized: "Garbage", "Tires", "Furniture, Mattresses, Box Springs", "Electronics, Florescent Bulbs, Batteries", "Plastic or Metal Toys", "Styrofoam or any other type of packing material", "Plastic bags". Mattresses and box springs are thus named in Salem's own words on the refused side of its own free drop-off, and leaving one beside the containers is barred twice over - by the exclusion and by the instruction not to place anything outside them. Source Not confirmed: The city publishes no street number or opening hours for the recycling center, locating it only next to the Salem Fire Department on South Ellsworth Avenue with one-way entry from Filbert Street. Not confirmed: The page does not say how Salem residency is checked, or what happens to a resident who leaves a refused item.

• 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