Junk removal in Charlotte, with starting prices posted.

If you can drive one bulky item to a county Full-Service Center yourself, that can cost you nothing at the gate. The county's fee sheet labels GROUP 1 a “1 Item Only Category”. The GROUP 1 fee cell is “No Charge” — for a Mecklenburg County resident whose vehicle displays the free resident sticker. The sticker is the whole condition. The same sheet states: “If no sticker is displayed, you will pay based on the out of county category.”

The sheet puts the sticker itself this way: “Current blue stickers do not expire, even if they display an earlier date.” Fee attendants at the Full-Service Centers issue them.

The moment there is more than one item, GROUP 2 prices the whole load. There is no first-item discount inside GROUP 2. The county's fee sheet states: “Bulky Waste: $15/unit”. Construction and demolition debris on that same GROUP 2 cell is “Construction & Demolition Debris: $25/” per unit. A unit is a load, not an item. The sheet's note reads “1 unit = 1 load of material”, and its example of two units is a loaded vehicle plus a loaded trailer. One loaded pickup is one unit, not one unit per thing in the bed. GROUP 2 has a ceiling too: units under three cubic yards. Bigger loads and longer trailers move to GROUP 3 and get weighed. Those are county gate fees, not 704junk starting prices.

Not everything at those centers is priced by the load. The same sheet accepts household hazardous waste — chemicals, fertilizers, batteries and paints out of a home, no business materials — at no charge from Mecklenburg County residents, and names batteries, car batteries included, among what a resident may bring in.

If you already get City of Charlotte garbage, you schedule the pickup, and the item is on the city's bulky list, that couch does not need a private hauler. Couches, chairs, mattresses, and box springs sit on the eligible side of that list. Pallets are on that eligible side too, listed by the City as “Pallets.” — with the City's condition that they be broken down with the nails removed or flattened. That is a city curbside program, free to the resident, and it is a genuinely good option.

Debris from a commercial contractor's work is not a city pickup. The City's eligibility list puts it this way: “Any materials resulting from work performed by a commercial contractor.” Roofing is out as well; the City lists “Roofing materials, shingles.” Insulation is the same story — on the not-eligible side the entry reads “Insulation.” Tree stumps are out too, filed by the City as “Tree stumps.” Countertops in marble, simulated marble, or granite do not ride the city truck either, and the City's wording is “Marble or simulated marble countertops (includes granite).” Chain-link fencing is the last of them, listed by the City as “Chain link fencing.”

A few things cannot go into a North Carolina landfill at all — and that is a recycling rule, not a price. A ban says where an item may not end up, not what it costs to move. NC DEQ's landfill-ban list names “Lead-acid batteries”. The same list names “Wooden pallets”. It lists “Motor vehicle oil filters”. Two of the three have a door named up this page: Mecklenburg takes batteries at no charge as household hazardous waste (No Business Materials allowed, in the county’s own words), and the City's bulky list takes pallets broken down. The county sheet does not name oil filters at all, so ask the county before you load those.

A narrower ban sits under its own heading. NC DEQ writes: “Banned from disposal in construction and demolition debris landfills:” That heading is not the general landfill list. Under it the page names “Fluorescent lights”. The same heading covers “Mercury-containing thermostats”. Those two are banned from construction and demolition debris landfills, not from every landfill in the state.