Junk Removal in Orland Park, IL

Junk removal in this village is really a question about the difference between what the Village will take at the curb and what it will not, so start there. Orland Park’s contracted residential collection gives every household a 96-gallon refuse cart, takes overflow in bags or containers “no greater than 45-gallon in size” and under 50 pounds, and caps the whole thing at “up to three cubic yards of refuse per week” with one bulk item alongside it. The Village’s definition of that bulk item is the line to remember: “an item the resident would take with them if they moved out of the residence (e.g., couch, small tables, mattress, etc.).” One sofa a week, one mattress a week, one set of small tables a week. Everything at the curb by 6:00 a.m., carts about three feet apart so the mechanical arm can work. It is a good program. It is also a program designed for a household, not for the day a garage finally gets emptied.

The second thing is what a real clear-out here actually looks like, because the demographics make it fairly predictable. Census QuickFacts puts Orland Park at 85.8 percent owner-occupied across 23,256 households, with 24.8 percent of residents aged 65 and over and a median monthly owner cost without a mortgage of $978 — a village of long-tenure owners, many of whom have paid the house off. Long tenure means accumulation in the places where accumulation is invisible: the crawl space, the rafters over the garage, the back of the shed, the far end of the basement. A clear-out that starts as “the garage” is usually three spaces by the second afternoon, which is why a container that stands there for a week beats a truck that leaves in an hour.

The third thing is the one that actually catches people out, and it is a state-law question rather than a preference. Illinois keeps six materials out of a landfill-bound container by statute, and several of them are written about the container rather than about the landfill — which is precisely why they reach your driveway. In the order a householder meets them: landscape waste (415 ILCS 5/22.22), lead-acid batteries (22.23), white goods (22.28), tires (415 ILCS 5/55), liquid used oil (21.6), and electronics under the Consumer Electronics Recycling Act. None of that is a company policy we invented to be difficult. Every one of them has a section number behind it.

The fourth thing is genuinely good news, and it is local. Cook County publishes a list of its permanent electronics recycling drop-offs, and there are only two in the whole county. One of them is here: the Orland Township Electronics Recycling site run by the Road District of Orland Township at 16125 S. Wolf Road, Orland Park, IL 60467, on (708) 403-5148, open Monday to Friday, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. — forty hours a week. Note the county’s own condition: televisions and computer monitors require either a prepurchased coupon or payment at the gate at drop-off, by credit card only. We could not read the site’s accepted-item list, so call before you load the car. And note who runs it: the Road District of Orland Township is not the Village of Orland Park and not Orland Township’s general offices — three different bodies, one road.

For household chemicals, paint, garden chemicals, fluorescent bulbs, thermometers and thermostats, flammables, syringes and pool chemicals, the Village points residents at an “At Your Door” special collection service scheduled on 800-449-7587. The Village’s page lists eleven accepted categories and does not say who pays or what is excluded, so we will not tell you either — ask when you book. Everything that is left over — furniture, boxes, timber, carpet, fittings, the contents of thirty years of shelves — is ordinary container content, and that is our part of the job. Ring (708) 928-8633.

What Comes Out Of An Orland Park House

Sizing A Clear-Out Rather Than A Project

Clear-outs are bulky rather than dense, so this is one of the few services on the site where sizing up is usually the cheaper mistake. For a single garage, a single room or a shed, a 15 yard is right. For the ordinary house-and-garage clear-out — which in practice means the garage, the basement and the closets going out together — the 20 yard is the default, and in this village it has a second argument behind it: the Village caps a residential container at 768 cubic feet, about 28.4 cubic yards, so a 20 sits comfortably inside the rule with the eight-foot height limit no trouble either. Where a whole house is being emptied at once — an estate, a downsize, a sale with a fixed date — a 30 yard is the honest answer, and that page explains why the Village’s cubic-foot figure becomes a live question at that size rather than a footnote. What almost never suits a clear-out is the 10 yard: it is a weight box, built low for concrete and soil, and household bulk will fill it long before it weighs anything. Describe the spaces on (708) 928-8633.

The Things That Do Not Go In The Box

Here is the list of what does not go in the container, with the reason attached to each, because a rule with a reason behind it is easier to follow. Landscape waste. 415 ILCS 5/22.22 provides that no person may knowingly put landscape waste “into a container intended for collection or disposal at a landfill, unless such container is biodegradable.” A roll-off is exactly such a container. That statute is also the reason the Village’s yard waste bags are Kraft paper rather than plastic — a paper sack is the biodegradable container the law is describing. Lead-acid batteries. 415 ILCS 5/22.23 uses the same container language, and defines a lead-acid battery as one “intended for use in motor vehicles”, with motor vehicle including “automobiles, vans, trucks, tractors, motorcycles and motorboats.” The old car battery on the garage shelf is squarely inside it. White goods. 415 ILCS 5/22.28 is the most misquoted rule in this state, because it is not a flat ban — it says no person shall collect white goods for landfill disposal “unless the white good components have been removed”, those components being refrigerant, mercury switches, PCB-containing capacitors and ballasts, and mercury lamps. That is a processing requirement, and it is exactly why the Village’s own page tells residents to “call Customer Service… prior to collection” before setting a fridge at the curb, on (800) 964-8988. Tires. 415 ILCS 5/55 forbids knowingly mixing any used or waste tire with municipal waste. It also has a small, quotable household provision: the water-accumulation prohibition does not apply at a residential household “as long as not more than 4 used or waste tires at the site are covered and kept dry.” Liquid used oil. 415 ILCS 5/21.6 bans mixing liquid used oil with municipal waste bound for a landfill — and expressly says that “used oil filters, rags, absorbent material used to collect spilled oil… or empty containers” are not liquid used oil. That converts a vague rule into a usable answer for a garage clear-out. Electronics. Covered devices are kept out of landfill disposal in Illinois under the Consumer Electronics Recycling Act (415 ILCS 151/). We do not publish a date for that ban, because three sources give three different ones, including the Village’s own page. What is not in dispute is the device list, and the Village publishes eighteen of them: televisions, monitors, printers, computers (laptop, notebook, netbook, tablet, desktop), electronic keyboards, fax machines, videocassette recorders, portable digital music players, DVD players, video game consoles, small scale servers, scanners, electronic mice, digital converter boxes, cable receivers, satellite receivers and DVD recorders. The Road District of Orland Township takes them on Wolf Road. And then the ordinary refusals in any container anywhere: liquids, solvents, fuel, pool chemicals, pressurized cylinders, and anything containing asbestos. Paint is a special case worth quoting, because the Village is precise about it: paint “must be dried out in the can in order to be collected. Only latex (water based) paint is allowed in regular trash once dried out.”