How to get rid of a TV in Baltimore

The short answer

Visit minimum $75, so one small TV at $62 is a $75 visit. A TV and the stand it sat on is $68 + $96 = $164.

Carry-out from any floor and responsible electronics recycling are included. There is no e-waste surcharge and no weight charge on an old tube set.

A TV is not bulk trash

Electronics are handled separately from household waste across Maryland, and televisions are the strictest category because of what is inside them. Do not assume a TV goes out with the rest of a bulk set-out.

Check the current electronics rules for your address before planning anything, and note that Baltimore City and Baltimore County run different programs. A rowhouse in Waverly and a house in Towson follow different instructions.

The practical consequence in this city is specific: a TV left in a rear alley does not get taken. The scrap trucks that work Baltimore's alleys will happily remove a steel dryer and will leave a television exactly where it is, because there is no easy value in one. So it sits, it rains, and the pile around it grows.

Tube sets, plasmas and flat panels

Three different objects, one price band.

The CRT. The old tube television, still sitting in a startling number of Baltimore rowhouse cellars next to the furnace. Heavy out of all proportion to its size, and containing leaded glass, which is exactly why the rules exist. Nearly all of them are under 42 inches, so $62.

The plasma. The heavy generation of flat panel from before LED took over. Much heavier than a modern set of the same size and genuinely fragile. Usually $68.

The modern flat panel. Light and thin, and the one most likely to be damaged in handling because the panel flexes. $68 or $73 depending on size.

Measure diagonally across the screen, corner to corner, not the frame, if you are not sure which band you are in.

Wall mounts and the plaster problem

If the set is on a wall bracket, decide in advance whether the bracket is staying.

Baltimore rowhouses are mostly plaster over lath, or brick behind the plaster, and a mount was either anchored properly into studs or masonry, or it was not. Taking a bracket off an interior plaster wall usually leaves four holes and some crumbling. Taking one off a brick wall in a converted mill loft in Hampden or Woodberry leaves four anchors you will want a drill for.

A crew will lift the set off the bracket, which is the two-person part. Removing the bracket itself, patching and painting are not removal work, and on a rental you generally want to handle that yourself before the inspection anyway.

Factory reset it before the crew arrives

Modern televisions are computers. Yours is signed into streaming accounts and, on many sets, holds a saved wifi password and sometimes a payment method.

• Sign out of every streaming service individually.
• Run a full factory reset from the settings menu.
• Take the streaming stick or game console off the back and keep it, or bin it deliberately.

Once it leaves in the truck you are not getting it back to do this. Five minutes now.

Donation, and when it is realistic

A working flat panel from the last few years genuinely finds a home. Community organizations, waiting rooms and neighborhood groups take them, and there is a reasonable secondhand market in Hampden, Remington and Charles Village.

What nobody takes, at any price: tube televisions, plasma sets, anything with a cracked or lined panel, and anything with a rear-projection cabinet. Do not spend a week finding that out. It is not a reflection on the set, it is that the market ended.

Working sets we route to reuse where we can. Everything else goes to electronics recycling, and that cost is already in the price.

Getting a big one out of a rowhouse

Two situations come up repeatedly in Baltimore.

The 65-inch on the second floor. It arrived in a box that was carried up by two people. It is leaving the same way, ideally with the original box if you still have it, and a blanket if you do not. Panels crack when they flex, so it goes down the stairs flat-faced and vertical, never laid on its back.

The tube set in the cellar. Dug-out basement, narrow stair, low pipes overhead, and a set that weighs more than the person carrying it expects. Two people and straps, and it is still $62.

The entertainment center it was sitting on is $96, and in an older rowhouse it was almost certainly assembled in the room, so it comes apart on the way out.

Booking it

Pick the size band, add the stand and any boxes of electronics, see the total, pick a window. Say if it is a tube set and which floor it is on, so the crew brings the right number of people. Neither changes the price.

Frequently asked questions