How to get rid of stuff in Madrid

From the editor

What residents need to know

Where things go in Madrid

Every option in this guide, arranged by the thing you are getting rid of. A missing name is not a refusal. It means nobody has told us either way, which is worth asking about before you make the trip.

Book before you carry anything down. Furniture left on the street without a collection booked is fly-tipping rather than a collection, and the free service takes up to five items, one request a week.

Mattresses go through the same free booked collection as furniture, from beside your nearest street container. For a whole flat, plan it across weeks or drive to a Punto Limpio.

The sixteen Puntos Limpios Fijos take appliances free, Monday to Saturday. If it still works, a reuse charity is the better first call, in Madrid that often means someone gets a job moving it as well.

Free at any Punto Limpio. They will not take biowaste, tyres, or anything radioactive, explosive, flammable or infectious, which each have their own route.

Madrid has an unusually strong reuse sector, and several of the organisations here are work-integration projects rather than ordinary charities.

Paint and household chemicals go to a Punto Limpio. Nothing radioactive, explosive, flammable or infectious is accepted, so read the label first.

The words Madrid uses

These are the terms on the city's own pages. They stay in the local language here for the same reason they do on a form: the English version will not get you to the right page.

Punto Limpio

Madrid's municipal drop-off site. Sixteen fixed ones, open Monday to Saturday and free for residents, plus mobile and neighbourhood variants that take much less.

Puntos Limpios Fijos

The sixteen full sites, 08:00–20:00 Monday to Saturday. Quantities are capped rather than open-ended: five bulky items such as furniture, mattresses, bed bases, doors or flat glass, and 150 kg of wood. No biowaste, no tyres, and nothing radioactive, explosive, flammable or infectious.

Puntos Limpios Móviles y de Proximidad

Compartmented trucks that park at 351 district stops on set days, plus 70 small permanent points inside sports centres and libraries. The trucks take used clothes and shoes; the proximity points do not.

Recogida de muebles y enseres

The booked free collection of furniture, mattresses, bed bases, doors and small appliances, up to five items, one request a week. Book it in the Madrid Móvil app, at avisos.madrid.es or on 010, then leave the things on the pavement beside the nearest waste container.

Recogida programada

A different service, and the difference matters: there is nothing to book. Each street has a fixed day of the month and you put things out yourself between 21:00 and 23:00 that evening, under three cubic metres and six items. Leaving furniture out on any other day is fineable.

Ayuntamiento

The city council. It runs both free collections and the Puntos Limpios, and its cleaning ordinance is what turns furniture left out on the wrong day into a fine.

010

The council's phone line. It books a furniture collection, and it is also how SELUR is requested.

SELUR

The council's special cleaning service. It is the route for anything infested with bedbugs or other parasites, which must never go out with an ordinary collection: booked through 010, and the item wrapped in plastic.

ReMAD

The council's own give-away platform, unusual, since most cities leave giving away to private sites. It runs on points rather than money: photograph the object, take it to a punto limpio for staff to check, and a neighbour reserves it and collects it from that site.

Centros de Reutilización

Three reuse centres, Villaverde, San Blas-Canillejas and Fuencarral-El Pardo, that since 2025 have extended ReMAD to furniture, household goods and working electrical items, which the platform previously would not take.

Things that catch people out

• Book before you carry anything down. Furniture left on the street without a collection booked is fly-tipping, not a collection.
• On collection day, leave things on the pavement beside the nearest waste container, without blocking people or cars, the council is specific about this.
• One request a week, up to five items. If you are clearing a whole flat, plan it across weeks or use a Punto Limpio.
• The Puntos Limpios will not take biowaste, tyres, or anything radioactive, explosive, flammable or infectious. Those have separate routes.
• If it still works, offer it to a reuse charity first. In Madrid that often means someone gets a job moving it as well as a home for the thing.

What it costs in Madrid

What each option charges, in its own words, with the date we last read it. We publish no price of our own: a number we typed would go stale before the sentence it came from did.

• Amsterdam 7 options·7 free·Checked 20 Aug 2026
• Barcelona 5 options·4 free·Checked 18 Aug 2026
• Berlin 8 options·5 free·Checked 20 Aug 2026