Where it all goes after the truck leaves
A junk removal load almost never goes to one place. Knowing how it gets split up explains a lot about how the job is priced — and about why a couple of things get pulled out and handled on their own.
The four destinations
| Where | What goes there |
|---|---|
| Donation | Furniture, appliances and household goods with life left in them. Memphis has a deep network of charity resale, and a sofa in decent shape is worth more to somebody else than it is to a landfill. |
| Scrap | Appliances, metal furniture, cast iron, wire and anything with recoverable metal in it. Scrap has value, which is part of why a heavy metal item is often cheaper to move than its weight suggests. |
| Recycling | Cardboard, clean wood, concrete and yard waste, which are processed rather than buried. |
| Transfer station | Everything else. Charged by weight, which is why dirt, plaster and roofing price differently from a truck full of boxes. |
The things that route separately
A few items don't ride in a general load. They go to a specific facility instead, usually because of how they have to be processed:
| Item | Where it needs to go |
|---|---|
| Paint, stain, solvents, pool chemicals | Shelby County household hazardous waste collection. Latex paint that has been dried out solid is ordinary trash; oil-based is not. |
| Motor oil, fuel, antifreeze | Auto parts stores take used oil at no charge. Fuel goes through household hazardous waste. |
| Tires | Tire retailers, for a per-tire fee. Hauling waste tires commercially is separately registered in Tennessee, so they travel on their own. |
| Propane tanks | The exchange cages at hardware stores and filling stations. |
| Older building materials | Anything from a pre-1980 house that may contain asbestos or lead — popcorn ceiling, old floor tile, pipe wrap — is worth testing before it is disturbed at all. |
| Sharps and medical waste | Pharmacies take sharps containers. Anything beyond that needs specialist handling. |
| Ammunition and flares | Local law enforcement. Never anything that gets compacted. |
Refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners
Anything with a sealed cooling system has its refrigerant recovered by someone licensed to handle it before the unit is scrapped — that is federal law, and it happens at the recycling facility rather than at your house. It is a reasonable thing to ask about, and a straight answer is easy to give.
Just tell us what you've got
You do not need to work any of this out in advance. If your garage has a shelf of old paint and a couple of tires on it, that is completely normal and it is a lot easier to point them out than to sort them yourself. Describe the pile, including the awkward parts, and the routing gets handled as part of scoping the job.