How to get rid of a TV or old electronics in Salt Lake City

The short answer

The usual living-room job is the TV and the cabinet it sat on: $68 + $96 = $164. A cleared home office is a monitor, a printer and a box of cables and old drives: $58 + $77 = $135, and that is comfortably over the $75 minimum.

Why you cannot just bin it

Electronics are not general household waste. Screens, boards and batteries contain materials that should not go into a landfill cell, and most facilities and haulers in the valley will refuse a television in a mixed load. Your curbside bin is not the route. Check your own city's or county's e-waste guidance for the current drop-off arrangements if you want to handle it yourself — the rules differ between the Salt Lake County cities and are worth two minutes of reading.

The practical consequence is that the old TV stays in the basement. That is why so many Salt Lake basements have a stack of them: one CRT from the 1990s, one rear-projection monster from about 2003, and a flat panel that stopped working in 2016. All three are removable, all three are priced, and none of them get tipped into general waste.

The rear-projection problem

Every long-held house in this valley seems to have one. The big rear-projection or early plasma set in the basement family room, on a stand, in a corner, put there before the basement was finished around it. They weigh far more than a modern panel of the same screen size, they have no handles, and they will not go up a narrow staircase without two people and a plan.

They are also the single most common reason people finally call. The homeowner has tried twice, once with a neighbor, and the thing has not moved. It prices as a TV by size — over 65 inches is $73 — and the carry up the stairs is included. There is no stair charge.

Wipe your data first

Do this before the truck comes, not after. We do not destroy data and you should not assume anyone does.

• Smart TVs: factory reset and sign out of every streaming account. A modern set holds your logins.
• Computers and laptops: remove or wipe the drive. Physically pulling the drive is the version you can be certain about.
• Printers: many office machines keep scanned documents in memory. Reset them.
• Phones, tablets and watches: sign out of the account first, then factory reset, in that order.
• Routers and network gear: hold the reset button until it clears. They store credentials.

Home offices and Silicon Slopes turnover

The tech corridor running from Draper down through Lehi and American Fork changed what a Salt Lake household's electronics pile looks like. A lot of homes across the south valley built out a real home office in the last few years — two monitors, a dock, a printer, a standing desk — and a lot of those setups have since been replaced, downsized, or made redundant by a return to an office in Lehi.

That produces a specific job: a desk, an office chair, a monitor or two and a box of peripherals. Priced out, that is desk $83 + office chair $61 + monitor $58 + box of electronics $77 = $279, in one visit, with one minimum.

Donate or sell what still works

A working flat panel from the last few years has real value. List it on KSL Classifieds with the model number and a photo of it switched on — that photo is what makes it sell, because everyone assumes a used TV is broken. Working monitors, current-generation consoles and recent laptops all move quickly in this valley, particularly near the university at the start of a semester.

Be realistic about the rest. Nobody wants a CRT, a rear-projection set, a printer older than five years, or a box of VGA cables. Charity shops around the valley generally decline old televisions outright, and the ones that take electronics want them working and tested. If it is not sellable within a week, it is a removal item.

Booking it

Pick your items, see the total, choose a window. Two people arrive, take the set from wherever it is — basement family room, a third-floor apartment on 2nd Avenue, a home office over the garage in Herriman — and carry it out. You do not need to disconnect anything beyond unplugging it, though pulling the wall mount off yourself saves a few minutes.

The load goes to an electronics stream rather than to general waste. That is included in the price. There is no recycling surcharge, no screen fee and no weight charge added afterwards. A 55-inch television is $68, in the Avenues and in Daybreak alike.

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