How to get rid of a mattress in Harlingen, TX.

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 Harlingen and its neighbors.

• Republic Services' bilingual Cameron County brush/bulk flyer, published on the county's own site and linked from its Residential Solid Waste Services page, carries the same rules in English and Spanish — and the Spanish column accepts one thing the English column does not list. The English “Acceptable Bulk Items” are Furniture, Sofas, Tables, Chairs, Mattresses, Washers/dryers, Water heater. The Spanish “Articulos bultosos — Articulos Aceptables” are Muebles, Sofas, Mesas, Sillas, Colchones, Lavadoras / Secadoras, Calentadores de agua, and Estufas — stoves, which appear on no English list on either the flyer or the county's 2026 calendar. The same one-line addition survives into the 2026 calendar, so it is not a one-time typo in an old flyer. The Spanish also gives the monthly volume cap a more concrete yardstick: where the English says “approx. the size of a mid size automobile”, the Spanish says “aprox. el tamaño de una Chevy Tahoe”. Both halves agree on the rest: brush no longer than 8 feet, no more than 10 cubic yards a month, brush in a separate pile from bulky items, the trash cart visible from the street during the service week to identify the household as a Republic customer, items kept 6 feet clear of meters, boxes, wires, parked cars and overhangs, one pass only with no return for late set-outs, and Freon-bearing items accepted only when “the Freon removed by an authorized facility and be labeled with a decal from that facility indicating that is has been removed”. The flyer's heading is “ATTENTION CAMERON COUNTY RESIDENTS” / “ATENCION RESIDENTES DE CAMERON COUNTY”, without the word rural that the 2026 calendar adds. Source Not confirmed: The flyer carries a 2021 upload path and a ©2020 Republic Services mark, and its collection dates are the 2021 schedule; only its rules, not its dates, are treated as current, and the 2026 calendar supersedes them. Not confirmed: Whether “Estufas” is a deliberate Spanish-side addition or an English-side omission is not stated anywhere; the county publishes no reconciliation, so a reader relying on the English list alone would not know stoves are collected. Not confirmed: Neither column publishes a fee.
• Neither Cameron nor Hidalgo County owns a landfill a resident could drive a mattress to. TCEQ's GI-611, “Active Municipal Solid Waste Landfills in Texas” (January 2026), names exactly one active landfill in Cameron County — “CITY OF BROWNSVILLE MUNICIPAL LANDFILL”, permit 1273A, Type 1 — and three permits in Hidalgo County: “CITY OF EDINBURG LANDFILL”, permit 956C, Type 1; “CITY OF EDINBURG LANDFILL”, permit 2302, Type 4; and “LA GLORIA RANCH LANDFILL”, permit 2348, Type 1. Not one of them is county-owned. TCEQ's own note on the types matters to anyone reading the Edinburg entries: “Type I landfills are authorized to accept all types of municipal solid waste”, while “Type IV landfills may only accept brush, construction and demolition debris, and rubbish” and “may not accept putrescible (organic) waste ... or household waste” — so Edinburg's Type IV permit is not a route for a mattress even though its Type I permit is. For the two counties this means the county-run options are what the county publishes and no more: in Hidalgo, thirteen permit-gated citizen collection stations open only to rural and unincorporated residents; in Cameron, a franchised monthly curbside bulky route for the rural county and an annual free drop-off week. A mattress from an incorporated Valley city goes to that city's own service or to a privately or municipally owned landfill on its own terms, which is city-level research and not recorded here. Source Not confirmed: This records what the state register lists, not who may use those three landfills or what they charge for a mattress; the City of Brownsville, City of Edinburg and La Gloria Ranch sites are city or private facilities and their gate rates are not established here. Not confirmed: A facility may take mattresses without being a permitted municipal solid waste landfill — transfer stations and Type IV sites are on separate registers — so the absence of a county landfill on this list does not by itself prove a county has no drop-off; in both counties the county's own pages were read directly and agree.
• Cameron County is the rarer arrangement in Texas: the county itself franchises household collection, and it is not optional. “Cameron County requires that each residential household have solid waste services. Cost of service is $93.30 per quarter (before tax). There will be a one-time account set up charge of $5.00 (before tax), which will be reflected on your initial bill.” The county's own words for the program are “this required program”. The contractor is Allied Waste / Republic Services, 9402 W. Expressway 83 (& Bass Blvd.), Harlingen, Texas 78552, 1-800-423-7316, and the county side sits in the Department of Transportation's Solid Waste Division, 1390 W. Expressway 83, San Benito, Texas 78586, (956) 247-3535. “Each household will receive one 96 gallon container upon signing up for service”, with more available on request. The set-out rules are “All solid waste must be bagged and placed in the container for collection”, “Have your container placed within 5 feet of mailbox by 6:30 AM on your collection day”, “All containers must be removed from roadside after collection”, “Place container with lid opening towards the street” and “Containers must not be blocked by vehicles or other obstructions”. A mattress obviously does not go in a 96-gallon cart, and it does not have to: the same subscription carries a separate monthly brush and bulky route on which a mattress is a named accepted item, so for a household in unincorporated Cameron County the quarterly bill is the whole of the published cost of getting rid of one. Billing questions go to Republic on 1-800-423-7316, not to the county. The county also publishes the Texas Litter Abatement Act penalties for fly-tipping on the same page, from “Class c Misdemeanor — If the amount dumped weighs 5 pounds or less ... a fine not to exceed $500” up to a state jail felony at 1,000 pounds or 200 cubic feet, which is the bracket a dumped mattress and box spring would sit near. Source Not confirmed: The page does not say in its own words that the service is confined to unincorporated Cameron County, though the county's 2026 brush calendar is addressed to “RESIDENTS RURAL CAMERON COUNTY” and its brush sector map draws city limits as a separate category outside the four collection sections. Not confirmed: It publishes no per-item charge for a bulky item and no extra-pickup price; $93.30 per quarter plus the $5.00 set-up charge is all the county states. Not confirmed: Sales tax is excluded from both figures and no rate is given. Not confirmed: The county's Spanish version of this page at /es-419/ is a machine translation of the same text — it renders “Brush Bulk Information” as “Información general sobre cepillos”, i.e. hairbrushes — and adds no rule the English omits.
• Once a year Cameron County opens free drop-off sites in every precinct, and in 2026 it ran as the “2026 TRASH BASH IN PREPARATION FOR Hurricane Season” from “MAY 18th - MAY 23rd”, “MONDAY- FRIDAY 8AM - 4:30PM” and “SATURDAY 8AM - 2PM”. The flyer's terms are “ACCEPTING HOUSEHOLD & BULKY WASTE TRASH ONLY AT THESE LOCATIONS” and “NO TIRES, OIL, BATTERIES, REFRIGERATORS, OR CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS”; the county's own event listing repeats it as “Household & Bulky Waste only” with “NOT Accepted: Tires, oil, batteries, or construction materials”, and describes the week as “to help residents dispose of household and bulky waste”. Fourteen sites were opened across the four precincts. Precinct 1 (Commissioner Sofia Benavides, 956-574-8171): S. Dakota Ave & Bismark Blvd; St. Louis St & N. Illinois Ave; California Rd & S. Browne Rd; Paso Real & Nuevo Leon. Precinct 2 (Commissioner Joey Lopez, 956-574-8175): Centro Cultural, 2100 Gregory Ave; San Pedro Catholic Church, 7602 Old Military Rd; PCT 2 Warehouse, 7092 Old Alice Rd. Precinct 3 (Commissioner David Garza, 956-361-8222): Bejarano-McFarland Park, 235 E. Michigan Ave; Arroyo City Firehouse, 34921 FM 2925; PCT 3 Warehouse, 26945 FM 510. Precinct 4 (Commissioner Gus Ruiz, 956-492-7073): Santa Rosa Park, 513 FM 506; El Ranchito Park, 24133 Zapotec St; PCT 4 Warehouse, 26641 White Ranch Rd. The dates have passed, but the pattern is the useful part: the county has run this in the run-up to hurricane season, it charges nothing, and unlike the brush round and unlike Hidalgo County's stations, nothing the county published for it restricts it to unincorporated residents or asks for a permit. Anyone in Cameron County with a mattress to shift in a hurricane-season cleanout should watch the county's announcements in April for the next one. Source Not confirmed: Neither the flyer nor the event listing names a mattress as accepted. “Household & bulky waste” is the whole of the published policy and the exclusion list is short, but a mattress is not confirmed, so no drop-off service is recorded for this event. Not confirmed: No eligibility rule, residency check or permit is published for the Trash Bash either way — the absence of a restriction is not a published permission. Not confirmed: No 2027 dates are published; the event listing for 2026 is marked “This event has passed.” Not confirmed: Four of the fourteen sites, all in Precinct 1, are given as road intersections with no street number.