How to get rid of an old TV in Nashville

The short answer

Priced by screen size, not by weight or type. A 32-inch tube TV in a wooden cabinet and a 32-inch flat panel are both $62. The per-visit minimum is $75, so a single TV on its own is a $75 visit; send it with anything else and you pay the item price.

You cannot put it out with the household waste

Televisions are handled separately from general waste almost everywhere, because of what is inside them. Metro's rules depend on your service address and building type, so check your current bulky-pickup and recycling guidance before setting anything out.

What is inside, briefly, because it explains the rules. A tube TV carries several pounds of leaded glass in the funnel of the picture tube. Older flat panels, particularly LCDs from the late 2000s, often use mercury-containing backlight lamps. Everything has a circuit board with recoverable metals on it. None of that is meant to be crushed into a landfill, which is why screens are the most commonly excluded item on any bulk-pickup list.

The tube TV in the basement

This is the most common TV call in Nashville and it is always in one of two places.

The first is the basement of an older Green Hills, Belmont-Hillsboro or Woodmont house, the small share of this city's housing that actually got a full lower floor. The second is the back of a detached garage behind a bungalow in East Nashville, Sylvan Park or Woodbine.

A 32-inch CRT in a cabinet weighs a great deal more than the 65-inch panel that replaced it, it has no handholds, and the weight is all at the front. Dropping one is not a small accident. It is a two-person carry every time, and on a 1940s basement stair with a low header it is an awkward one.

None of that shows up in the price. A tube set under 42 inches is $62, and there is no stair charge for bringing it up.

Wall mounts, and the hole behind them

If the TV is on a wall, take it down before the crew arrives or tell us it is still mounted so we send two people who can hold it while a third undoes the bracket.

A 65-inch panel coming off a wall bracket is a genuine two-person job, and the failure mode is the screen, which cannot be repaired. Newer panels are thin and flex more than people expect, so carry them vertically, never flat, and never by one edge.

The bracket itself usually stays unless you want it out, and the anchors behind it will have gone into studs or drywall. Budget for a patch either way. This comes up constantly in the tall-skinnies across The Nations and Cleveland Park, where almost every living room on the second floor has a mounted panel.

Wipe it first

Smart TVs are computers, and yours is logged into things.

Factory-reset the set and sign out of every streaming service before it leaves the house. Check the attached devices too, because the streaming stick behind the TV is usually the one with the saved payment method on it.

This matters most in a short-term rental. If you run a unit in East Nashville, Germantown or the Gulch and you are swapping the living-room TV, the outgoing set almost certainly still has accounts on it, occasionally yours rather than a guest's. Reset it before it goes on a truck.

The routes that sometimes work

• A working flat panel. Sells or gives away easily. Nashville's secondhand market moves working electronics quickly, helped by short-term rental operators kitting out units. One weekend is enough to know.
• Donation. Some organizations take working flat panels with a remote. Almost none take tube TVs or rear-projection sets. Call first; a refusal after you have loaded it is the worst outcome.
• Manufacturer or retailer take-back. Usually the best free option for recent equipment. Terms vary and generally exclude old screens.
• Electronics recycling drop-offs and collection events. These run periodically in the metro. Check what is currently accepted and whether there is a per-item charge for screens, because there often is, and check before you drive rather than after.

What does not work: putting it beside a dumpster, or leaving it at the curb outside a permitted window. A TV on a sidewalk in a Nashville summer gets rained on, the case cracks, and it becomes a mess rather than a pickup.

Common combinations

A TV rarely leaves on its own, which is convenient given the $75 minimum.

That third row comes to exactly the price of a quarter truck, which is $241, so either booking works.

Booking it

Tell us the screen sizes, how many, whether any are still wall-mounted, and what floor they are on. That is the whole conversation.

A 75-inch panel off a Gulch condo wall and a tube set out of a Belmont-Hillsboro basement are both flat-priced, both include disposal, and neither carries a surcharge for weight, stairs or awkwardness.

Frequently asked questions