TV and electronics disposal in Riverside: computers, monitors, printers and the garage box of cables

The short answer

The City of Riverside's bulky-item program excludes televisions, computers, monitors, cell phones and stereos. E-waste goes to electronics recyclers, county household hazardous waste collection, or the e-waste allowances some neighboring cities include in their programs. Riverside County landfills take up to two CRT devices per residential customer per day free. A flat pickup handles all of it in one trip: monitor $58, desktop tower $62, box of electronics $77, home or inkjet printer $58, with a $100 order minimum.

What counts as e-waste

For disposal purposes, think of anything with a circuit board, a screen or a battery:

• TVs and computer monitors, flat screen or tube.
• Desktop towers, laptops, tablets and phones.
• Printers, scanners, copiers and fax machines.
• Stereos, receivers, speakers with built-in amps, game consoles.
• Routers, modems, cable boxes and the tangle of chargers that comes with them.

Batteries, especially lithium ones in laptops, phones and e-bikes, need extra care. Pull removable batteries and tape the terminals, and never toss a swollen battery in a bin. In an inland garage that reaches very high temperatures in summer, a damaged lithium battery is not something to leave on a shelf for another season.

Options across the Inland Empire

• City of Riverside: not curbside. Electronics are on the bulky program's excluded list.
• Moreno Valley: up to four bulky and/or e-waste pickups a month through Waste Management, at least 24 hours notice.
• Corona: up to five e-waste items per special collection, three collections a year, alongside six bulk items and fifteen u-waste items.
• Ontario: e-waste accepted as part of the single-family bulky program, five large items per appointment, four a year.
• Riverside County: up to two CRT devices per residential customer per day free at county landfills, and household hazardous waste collection for other e-waste. Check the Department of Waste Resources for current sites and hours.

If you live in a city not listed here, such as Temecula, Murrieta or Rancho Cucamonga, check your city or hauler's page for its e-waste rules before you plan a trip.

Your data goes with the device

Before any computer, phone or tablet leaves the house, deal with what is on it.

1. Back up what you want to keep.
2. Sign out of accounts, and remove the device from your cloud account so it is not locked to you.
3. Factory reset phones, tablets and smart TVs.
4. For old desktop towers, pull the hard drive if you are unsure whether it was wiped. A drive is small; keep it, or destroy it yourself.
5. Copiers and multifunction printers from a small office can also store scanned documents. Check the manual for a wipe option.

We recycle whatever we can, but data security is the owner's job before pickup.

The home-office clear-out

Inland Empire households have a lot of home offices: commuters who switched to working from home rather than driving the 91 or the 15 every day, small businesses run out of a spare bedroom in Corona or Rancho Cucamonga, and retirees in Sun City with three generations of computers in a closet.

A typical job looks like this: a desktop tower, two monitors, an inkjet printer, an L-shaped desk and an office chair. $62 + $58 + $58 + $58 + $134 + $61 = $431. Every item is priced on its own, so leaving the desk takes $134 off.

Small offices and storefronts

The IE has plenty of small offices that turn over equipment: insurance and tax offices along the main boulevards, clinics near Loma Linda, and storefronts in Old Town Temecula or around Riverside's downtown core. Their e-waste is bigger and heavier than a household's. A freestanding laser printer is $71, a commercial copier $97, and a 4-drawer filing cabinet $75. A small-office refresh with a copier, two monitors, a desktop tower and a filing cabinet is $97 + $58 + $58 + $62 + $75 = $350. If the building requires a certificate of insurance before a crew can work on site, JunkRabbit emails one within 1 hour. Wipe the copier's stored documents first, as above.

Flat prices for electronics

Every item here is under the $100 minimum on its own. A garage shelf clear-out, two boxes of electronics and an old stereo, is $77 + $77 + $52 = $206. A TV and a box of cables: $68 + $77 = $145.

When a pickup makes more sense

Drop-off routes are cheap, but they assume you have a vehicle, a free day and the patience to sort items by where they are accepted. A pickup makes sense when the electronics are part of a bigger job (a move-out, an estate, a garage), when they are heavy (old CRTs and console TVs), or when you are in the City of Riverside and just want them gone without a separate trip. Upload a photo on the instant quote page, and the crew carries everything out from any floor, no stairs fee. Same day when booked by 4 PM.

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