TV and electronics disposal in Seattle

The rule, and the free route

Televisions, monitors, computers and most other electronics are handled separately from general waste throughout Washington. They do not belong in a bin and they are routinely excluded from municipal bulky-item collection.

Washington runs a long-established statewide household electronics recycling program with drop-off locations around the region. If you have one television or a couple of small items and an afternoon, look up the current participating sites near you — that route exists and it is worth using.

If it is easier to have it collected, or if there is more than you can carry: TV under 42 inches $62, 42 to 65 inches $68, over 65 inches $73, computer monitor $58, desktop tower $62, home printer $58, office laser printer $71, and a mixed box of electronics $77. Minimum visit $95.

Wipe your data before anything leaves the house

Do this first. It is the one step nobody can do for you afterwards.

• Computers and laptops: sign out of accounts, then factory reset or wipe the drive. If the machine will not boot, pull the drive and keep it.
• Phones and tablets: sign out of the account first, then erase. Signing out afterwards is much harder.
• Smart televisions: these hold streaming accounts and Wi-Fi credentials. Factory reset before it goes.
• Printers, routers and network gear: routers store your network credentials and some printers store scanned documents. Reset both.
• Anything with a camera or a microphone — doorbells, smart speakers, baby monitors: deregister from the account, then reset.

This matters everywhere, but it matters more here for the simple reason that an unusually high proportion of Seattle households are clearing out work-adjacent equipment with real accounts attached.

The Seattle home-office layer

There is a load shape that turns up in this city constantly, and it barely existed ten years ago.

A spare room or a corner of a one-bed in Ballard, Fremont, Wallingford or on the Eastside was converted into a working setup in a hurry. Then the job changed, or the company changed its office policy, or the household moved. What is left is a stratum of equipment nobody has touched in three years: a monitor or two, a tower or a docking station, a printer bought for one form, a mesh router from the previous flat, cables in a box, a chair.

Priced up, a fairly typical version: a monitor, a tower and a printer is $58 + $62 + $58 = $178.

Add the desk and the chair and it is a room cleared: a standard desk at $83 and an office chair at $61 on top of that, or $178 + $83 + $61 = $322.

Televisions: the two eras

Old CRT sets — the deep, heavy ones — are the harder problem. They contain leaded glass, they weigh far more than their size suggests, and nobody wants one. A CRT that has been sitting in a Seattle basement or garage for a decade is also likely to be damp and moldy on the cabinet.

Flat panels are light by comparison but awkward and fragile, and once the screen is cracked they have no second life at all.

Either way, the price goes by size: under 42 inches $62, 42 to 65 inches $68, over 65 inches $73.

One practical Seattle point on the big ones: a 70-inch panel wall-mounted in a South Lake Union or Belltown flat has to come off the bracket, out of the unit, into a lift and onto a street where a truck cannot linger. That is a two-person job and it is worth having it done rather than attempting it alone on a stepladder.

What else counts as electronics

The mixed box at $77 is the useful line for most households — cables, chargers, old phones, a games console, a couple of keyboards, the drawer nobody has emptied since the last move.

Batteries and the e-bike question

Lithium batteries need flagging rather than hiding. Loose batteries, power banks, and especially damaged or swollen ones are handled differently, and a damaged lithium cell is a genuine fire risk in a truck or a bin.

E-bikes and electric scooters are $56, and they have become a real category here — a lot of them were bought for a commute that changed, and a lot of those have been sitting in a garage or on a covered porch, which in this climate does the battery no favors.

Tell us in advance if a battery is swollen, damaged or has been in water. It changes how the item travels, not what it costs.

Getting it gone

1. Wipe everything with an account on it. Before anything else.
2. Check the statewide drop-off sites if you have one or two items and the time.
3. Otherwise book one visit and put the whole home-office layer on it — every visit carries the $95 minimum, so one trip beats three.
4. Keep it inside until the day. Electronics left on a porch or in a carport here take up moisture, and a damp television is not a recycling candidate, it is a disposal item.

Frequently asked questions