Old TV Just Gathering Dust? Here’s How to Get Rid of It Properly

Old TV Just Gathering Dust? Here’s How to Get Rid of It Properly

When your new TV arrives, you unplug the old one, lift it off your cabinet and sit it against the wall of your spare room, where it’ll gather dust while you set up the new one.

Then what? Where does that TV go?

Well, firstly, please don’t squish the TV into a bin or throw it into a skip, that’s one of the worst things you could do, before smashing it and leaving it in the middle of the road (don’t do that either, please). As the next heading implies, here’s how you dispose of your old TV properly.

How to dispose of your old TV in Australia

There are a few ways to responsibly get rid of your old TV, with some requiring a bit more effort than others. Let’s start with council clean up.

Council cleanup

The easiest way to get rid of your old TV in most parts of Australia is with a council cleanup, however, you need to make sure that your local council will actually take the TV. For example, you might think of TVs as white goods, which councils do widely collect, however they’re more considered to be brown goods or e-waste.

With this being the case, you’ll need to specifically check if your council will pick your e-waste up (yes, this also applies to laptops, monitors, tablets and other forms of e-waste). As garbage collection and council cleanups are a local government responsibility, you can’t rely on the rules being the same everywhere.

For example, while the City of Sydney has pickups available for e-waste, the Inner West (the next suburb over) only collects small electronics as a part of its ‘Bulky Household Items’ collection. I wouldn’t want to bend the rules on this too far, but if “small electronics” is any indicator, it probably applies to things that simply don’t take up too much space in a collection truck (double check with them if TVs under 32-inches might be OK in this case).

Booking instructions vary from council to council, with some offering only certain time slots in a month.

But what about if you have a monster 84-inch TV you need to get rid of? Well, you’ll probably need a car.

Community recycling centres

Some councils indicate that taking your old TV to a community recycling centre is the proper way of disposing of it. These community recycling centres will usually be listed on your local council’s website. Distance to the recycling centre obviously varies depending on where your home is and where the centre is, but for this method, you’ll likely need a car. You’ll also need to check opening hours.

Online databases

If you want to know where your closest recycling centre is to dispose of your old TV, Planet Ark has a really useful tool for checking this. Just go to recyclingnearyou.com.au and you’ll be able to search by postcode or region. You’ll also be able to filter by what you’re trying to recycle (in this case, TVs). Tech Collect also offers an online database if you’re after a recycling centre. Again, you’ll need a car to take your old TV to the recycling centre because I can’t imagine squeezing it on a bus to be overly appropriate.

Get your installer to take your current TV

Some retailers, such as JB Hi-Fi and Harvey Norman, offer extra TV removal services, where they’ll take your old TV and dispose of it at a proper facility. Keep in mind that this can cost extra, depending on who you’ve purchased the TV from. Canstar Blue has a handy list of retailers that remove old TVs here.

If you’ve come to this article after installing a new TV, I hope the new one is fabulous. But if it isn’t just an unloved TV you have laying around, here’s our tips on how to properly dispose of old phones.


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