How to Get Rid of a Mattress in Halifax
Short version: Halifax Regional Municipality will take your mattress at the curb, for free, on your regular garbage day — it counts as a bulky item. That works for most people. It stops working if you can't carry it out yourself, if you have more than one, or if you can't wait for the right collection week.
Here are all four options, what each one actually costs you, and how to tell which one you're in.
Put it out at the curb on garbage day
This is the option most people don't realize they have. HRM collects mattresses and box springs as bulky items alongside regular curbside garbage — you don't need a special pickup, a permit, or a trip to a depot. You do need to know four things first.
Garbage is collected every two weeks
Not weekly. If you just missed your day, the mattress sits somewhere for up to a fortnight — which is a common reason people give up on this option. Check your street's date on HRM's collection calendar before you plan around it.
One bulky item per collection day
Single-unit homes are allowed one bulky item each garbage day. Buildings of up to six units get two for the whole building. So a mattress plus a couch means two separate collection days, two weeks apart.
A mattress and box spring count as one
This is the useful exception. A mattress and its matching box spring go out together as a set and are treated as a single bulky item — so you're not splitting a bed across two collection cycles.
Size and weight limits
Bulky items can't exceed 200 kg. No mattress made comes close, so this one is never your problem — but it's worth knowing if the bed frame is going out too.
Put it out the evening before your collection day, keep it clear of the sidewalk and any parked cars, and bring it back in if it isn't taken. Rules do get updated, and some situations have their own wrinkles — if yours is unusual, HRM's What Goes Where tool or a quick call to 311 will give you the current answer for your exact address.
Where this falls down: you're the one getting it down the stairs and out the door. A queen mattress in a third-floor walk-up, on your own, is genuinely hard — and box springs don't bend around a stairwell corner the way a mattress does.
Recycling it — and why it's harder here than it should be
A mattress is mostly steel, foam, and wood, and all three are recyclable. The catch is that Nova Scotia has no province-wide mattress recycling program — unlike PEI — so there's no public depot you can simply drive one to. What exists instead is retailer take-back.
Buying a new mattress?
Some Halifax retailers will haul the old one away when they deliver the new one, usually for a small fee — ask whether it goes to a recycler rather than the landfill. It's the cheapest recycling route there is — but you have to ask before you buy, because it's rarely offered unprompted.
Not everything gets accepted
Recyclers turn away mattresses that are wet, mouldy, or have bed bugs — the materials can't be safely separated and processed. If yours is in that condition, recycling isn't on the table and disposal is the honest answer.
Donating or reselling it
Worth thirty seconds of thought and not much more. Most charities and thrift shops in HRM will not accept a used mattress at all — the liability around bed bugs and hygiene has made it a near-universal no. A few shelters and furniture banks make exceptions for mattresses that are genuinely clean, recent, and stain-free, so a phone call costs nothing.
Be honest with yourself about the condition. If you wouldn't put a guest on it, nobody's taking it, and you'll just have arranged a pickup that gets refused at the door.
Have someone take it away
This is what we do, so read it with that in mind. It's the right answer in a narrower set of cases than you'd think — and if you're in none of them, use the curb.
You can't get it out
Upstairs bedroom, basement, walk-up apartment with no elevator, or you're doing this alone. We carry it out from wherever it is — you don't move it an inch.
There's more than one
Two mattresses, a whole bedroom, or a tenant turnover. The one-item curbside limit turns that into months of garbage days; we take it all in one trip.
You need it gone now
New bed arriving, apartment showing, lease ending Saturday. Same-day and next-day pickup across HRM, seven days a week, rather than waiting for a collection date.
What it costs
A single mattress fits our $135 minimum — or as little as $110 if you book online and add a photo. HST is additional, and you get a firm quote before we start, not after.
Full details on mattress removal, or see how the pricing works if there's more than a bed going.
Which one are you?
Use the curb if…
It's one mattress, you live in a house or ground-floor unit, you can carry it out with a hand from someone, and you're not in a hurry. This is most people. It costs nothing and HRM handles it.
Call someone if…
Stairs, no elevator, no help, more than one item, or a deadline. Any one of those is enough — the free option quietly stops being free once it costs you a weekend or a strained back.
The cases that don't fit the list
Bed bugs
Don't put it at the curb, and don't let anyone haul it in an open truck — you risk spreading them through the building. Bed-bug mattresses need specialised handling and we can't take them either. Seal it in a mattress bag, tell your landlord or a pest-control company, and follow their instructions. See what we don't take.
Wet, mouldy or badly soiled
Recycling and donation are both out. Curbside disposal is still fine. We'll take it too, at the same price as any other mattress.
Apartment or condo
Your building may have its own bulky-waste arrangement that overrides the curbside rules entirely — ask your super before you drag anything downstairs. Buildings of up to six units fall under the municipal two-items-per-building limit, which goes fast in a full-turnover month.
No truck, no roof rack
Please don't drive it home on the roof of a car with your arm out the window. Beyond being unsafe, an unsecured load is a ticketable offence in Nova Scotia, and a queen mattress at highway speed behaves like a sail.
Mattress disposal questions
Can I put a mattress out with the garbage in Halifax?
Where can I dump a mattress in Halifax?
Where can I recycle an old mattress in Nova Scotia?
How much does it cost to get rid of a mattress in Halifax?
Can I put out a mattress and box spring at the same time?
What do I do with a mattress that has bed bugs?
Will a charity take my old mattress?
How do I get a mattress down from a third-floor apartment on my own?
Can't get it to the curb yourself?
One mattress or a whole bedroom — we carry it out from any floor. Free quote, no obligation.
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