Junk removal costs in Pensacola

If ECUA picks up your trash, give your old mattress a spot of its own at the curb. The Emerald Coast Utilities Authority now requires mattresses to be kept apart from other bulk items, and in some cases that turns one pickup into two trips.

ECUA serves homes in Escambia County, and its bulk pickup isn't automatic. Request it online or in the MyECUA app by 1:59 p.m. the day before your pickup day. Requests are reviewed on business days only. You get one pile a week, no bigger than 6 feet wide, 6 deep and 6 high. Furniture, bicycles, grills, drained lawn mowers, household electronics and big appliances like fridges and stoves all count. So do up to two toilets and one tub. Tires go in a separate pile, five a month at most. Set it out the night before, never more than 48 hours early.

Remodel leftovers aren't bulk to ECUA. Fencing, sheetrock, carpet and mixed piles go through its Extra Sanitation Service, and a supervisor wants a clear photo of the load first.

If the City of Pensacola's Sanitation Services is your collector, watch for the Mayor's Neighborhood Cleanup. Every city neighborhood gets one a year, sometime from January through October, and items have to be set out before 7 a.m. that day. It takes appliances, mattresses, carpet, tires and even old paint cans, with the tires and paint kept apart from the rest. Building materials stay behind, and so does any lumber past one cubic yard.