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When buying new furniture, most of us like to sell the old ones to offset the cost a little bit. However, when the furniture you’re replacing is too old to be worth selling, it can be kind of a pain to get rid of it. Rather than just dumping your old chairs or tables on the side of the road, we recommend having them recycled. It’s estimated that old furniture makes up about 5% of the trash generated by Americans each year, but there’s plenty of material in furniture that can be re-used instead.
Why You Should Recycle Your Furniture
At Junk King Contra Costa, we know how important it is to consider environmental factors when disposing of old junk, and furniture recycling is a big part of that. Furniture is usually just made up of wood and metal, both of which are easily recycled materials.
If you take your old furniture to a recycling center, they’ll strip it down, recover everything they can, and have all that material sent out to factories that will use it to make something new. The more we recycle materials like wood and metal, the lower the demand for new materials will be, which is a positive for the environment.
Strip mining and deforestation can wreak havoc on our delicate ecosystem, so recycling is one of the best things each of us can do to reduce the strain on Earth’s natural resources.
Why is it Important to Recycle Old Furniture?
Besides the environmental impact of just throwing something in the landfill, there are other practical reasons why recycling old furniture is a good idea.
For one thing, it’s illegal in most places to just dump furniture by the side of the road. We’ve all driven past gradually decaying couches along the edge of the highway, but you should probably recycle that old sofa instead of just leaving it next to its decomposing cousin.
Furniture recycling also creates less strain on our energy infrastructure than just creating new furniture from scratch. As a general rule, altering a recycled object uses about 90% less energy than manufacturing something entirely new.
It might not make a huge difference with a single mattress or chair, but when you consider a larger scale, something like recycling office furniture after a remodel will use significantly less energy than just throwing everything in the landfill.
Top 5 Tips on How to Recycle Your Furniture in Contra Costa County Properly
When you’re recycling furniture in Contra Costa County, you want to make sure you’re doing everything in the best way possible. Here are a few tips you can use to ensure that you’re recycling everything properly.
- Check Online Before Recycling – Before hauling an old piece of furniture down to the recycling center, you should go online and check the rules first. Every county has different rules for what they will or won’t accept, and it can be a real pain to schlep an old couch or dining room table all the way to the recycling center before finding out they can’t even accept it. This doesn’t just apply to furniture, of course – it’s a good thing to do before recycling anything at all.
- Wait For a Collection Event – Every once in a while, cities will hold recycling events to encourage people to get rid of their old stuff in an environmentally-friendly way. If you take your old furniture to one of these events, it’s a great way to avoid the fees that are usually involved with bringing something to a recycling center.
- Recycling Appliances is Trickier – Recycling office desks, couches, mattresses, and most other furniture is pretty easy. However, some appliances like refrigerators or televisions can be a little more complicated to recycle. Appliances with electronic parts inside are usually considered to be e-waste, which comes with its own set of rules. Recycling e-waste is especially important because the metals and other materials found in computer parts are very rare. Contra Costa County holds several free e-waste disposal events every year, so your best bet is to hold on to that old fridge or computer monitor until one of those rolls around.
- Be Careful When Lifting Old Furniture – Furniture can be heavy and difficult to move around, and it’s a lot easier to accidentally hurt yourself than you might think. Make sure you have enough people to safely distribute the weight of the object you’re carrying and don’t be afraid to ask for more help if you’re struggling. It’s also important to always crouch down and lift with your legs instead of bending over and lifting with your back. It only takes one wrong move to give yourself a back injury that can linger for the rest of your life, so be careful and safe when lifting and carrying furniture.
- Call a Professional – If you’d rather avoid the hassle of recycling your own old furniture, you can always hire a professional junk removal company like Junk King Contra Costa. We’ll handle everything for you, from loading the furniture into the truck to stripping down the materials and recycling them. We pride ourselves on being the most environmentally-friendly company in our industry, so recycling is kind of a specialty of ours. All you have to do is give us a call, wait for our junk removal professionals to show up at your house, and then point to the objects you need us to take. We’ll take care of everything else.
How to Get Rid of Old Furniture & Make a Difference for the Environment
If you’re interested in hiring Junk King to take care of recycling your old furniture, you can set up an appointment online or just give us a call at 1-888-888-JUNK. You can also use our free online price estimation tool to get an idea of how much the service will cost, or just ask for a free quote on the phone.
