Here’s How to Get the City of Philadelphia to Pick Up Your Big Trash

The City of Philadelphia will now pick up your bulk trash items like that old refrigerator that’s been sitting in your basement. (Getty Images)

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The City of Philadelphia Will Now Pick Up Your Old Refrigerator and Other Big Trash Items

On Monday morning, the City of Philadelphia announced a brand new “Residential Bulk Collection Program,” which has just been implemented. It used to be that if you had a refrigerator, dishwasher, water heater, chest freezer — you get the idea — you either had to pay somebody to haul it away for you, or you had to figure out a way to bring it to one of the city’s several sanitation centers for proper disposal. Same for car tires and large household furniture. You weren’t allowed to just put items like that out on your curb for weekly pickup. And you still can’t.

Under the new program, you can go online and make an appointment with the city for pickup, with a limit of four items per appointment. (The 311 phone center is also accepting appointments.) You input your name, address, phone number, what type of item(s) you need picked up, and then select a pickup date from a calendar. I have a mostly broken air conditioner I need to get rid of, so I went to the website this afternoon and was able to select this Wednesday for pickup. I immediately received an email confirmation from the city, along with instructions to write a four-letter code on the item so that workers are sure to take the right thing. You have to have your pickup on the curb by 7 a.m. on the scheduled day.

The service is limited to single-family homes or apartment houses/buildings that max out at six units. While the city will accept appointments for refrigerators (note that you have to remove the doors) and other major appliances, household furniture, televisions, and car tires (you have to remove the rims), it will not accept appointments for regular household trash or bagged mattresses — both of which should be put out on your designated trash day — hazardous materials, construction debris, or auto parts.

And, no, city workers will not come into your house, so if you scheduled pickup for that circa-1958 washing machine that finally stopped working, you have to figure out a way to get it to the curb. This is what your teenage neighbor and a $20 bill were made for.

The Return of SEPTA Parking Fees

Way back in June, I warned you that SEPTA was going to start charging for parking again at its stations after more than four years of no parking fees. And now, that’s exactly what SEPTA has gone and done. Before you start screaming, the cost is only $2 all day at the 96 surface lots and $4 per day at the three SEPTA garages. Plus, parking remains free at the surface lots on weekends and major holidays. So not as bad as it could have been.

By the Numbers

9:30 p.m.: According to a statement from the Philadelphia Police Department, that’s the time on Saturday when Philadelphia police first got a call about a large car “meetup” in Northeast Philly. Then came a call about another meetup elsewhere. And then another about another. Needless to say, Saturday night into early Sunday was a chaotic one in Philly, with more than 10 large car meetups and a bunch of smaller ones. Somebody even made a ring of fire outside City Hall. Police say that, in some cases, officers were attacked and police vehicles vandalized.

4th: Ranking of Philadelphia on this new report of the most rodent-infested cities in the country. So while we seem to be really, really bad at running an airport, we’re great at maintaining a thriving rodent population. Win some, lose some.

10: Number of hydrogen fuel cell buses SEPTA plans to unleash on the streets of Philadelphia this year as part of a pilot program. The buses are said to be more environmentally friendly than the average gas guzzling bus that barrels down your street. Here’s hoping the whole thing goes better than our brief foray into battery-powered buses.

Local Talent

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s opening night concert is this Thursday. Yannick’s got the baton. Hotshot Spanish violinist María Dueñas, who’s all of 21, is the featured guest. And Terry Gross of Fresh Air fame hosts the whole thing. (Gross is a huge music fan, and if you haven’t heard her interview with Yannick and Bradley Cooper about Yannick helping Cooper learn how to become a conductor for Maestro, here you go.) Every Monday, Ensemble Arts (the organization behind the Kimmel Center, the orchestra, the Academy of Music, etc.) releases discounted community rush tickets online. And when I checked the ticket site earlier today, you could sit in the fifth row for just $25. Use the promo code RUSHPHILORCH. Just don’t tell the person you sit next to that you got in for a mere fraction of what they paid.

And if the rush tickets are gone by the time you check, there’s always the next concert.