Free Electronics Recycling in Midland: TVs and Computers

September 1, 2026

Texas puts the recycling bill for a TV or computer on the company whose name is on it. From Midland, the fine print is geography: most of those programs are a prepaid label or a drive, not a drop-off down the street.

The City Sends Electronics Somewhere Else

Midland's own recycling page is short on electronics. The Citizens Collection Station on Smith Road and Butt's Recycling Center on West Industrial Loop take cardboard, paper, #1 and #2 plastics, and aluminum. For TVs and computers, the City's page points residents to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and its two manufacturer take-back programs, which it describes as offering free recycling to residents of Texas.

Nothing on the trash service's prohibited list names a television. That list is tires, vehicle batteries, oil, tree limbs, and construction debris, covered in what Midland's trash trucks won't take. But the EPA's guidance is blunt about the part that matters: lithium-ion batteries, and devices containing them, should not go in household garbage or recycling bins. That describes most laptops, tablets, and phones.

What Texas Law Requires of the Manufacturer

House Bill 2714, passed in 2007, created the Texas Recycles Computers Program. A manufacturer that sells new computer equipment in Texas has to offer consumers a free and convenient way to recycle its own brand — a monitor, a desktop or laptop, and the keyboard and mouse that came with it — and it has to be on the TCEQ's list before a retailer can sell its machines here. The obligation covers equipment bought primarily for personal or home-business use, regardless of when it was sold. A manufacturer that charges a fee at the time of recycling is out of compliance and can be fined up to $25,000 per violation.

Televisions run under a separate program, Texas Recycles TVs, with rules in Title 30 of the Texas Administrative Code, Chapter 328. Since April 1, 2013, retailers may only order and sell TVs from manufacturers on the TCEQ list, and the TCEQ keeps a brand-by-brand page linking to each maker's recycling instructions. One wrinkle: manufacturers are assigned a yearly share of TV recycling to collect, and a brand that has hit its number can drop its link until the next year.

What the Programs Look Like From Midland

Work down the TCEQ's brand list from a Midland address and the programs sort into three shapes:

• Drop-off networks. Best Buy's Insignia and Pioneer, Walmart's ONN and VIZIO, and Hisense and Toshiba all route through a recycler called MRM. Its locator, searched from 79701 at a 50-mile radius, returns exactly one site — the Staples on Navarro Drive — and the listing reads "NO TVs," with a six-device daily limit and a $19.99 fee on monitors.
• Mailback. Samsung and Westinghouse are listed by the TCEQ as mailback programs, and LG's program, which also covers Zenith and GoldStar, offers a prepaid label alongside its drop-off sites. You box the set, print the label, and ship it.
• Retail take-back. Best Buy's store program takes most electronics free, but charges $29.99 for TVs and monitors 50 inches and smaller that are not its own brands, takes tube TVs only at 31 inches and smaller, and caps it at two TVs per household per day.

One Saturday in November

The biggest electronics collection in Midland is Keep Midland Beautiful's Texas Recycles Day. The 2026 event is Saturday, November 14, 9 a.m. to noon, at the Midland College Chaparral Center on North Garfield. It is residential only, with a limit of six electronics per vehicle and one flat-screen TV per vehicle; computers, servers, phones, game consoles, cable boxes, and most home appliances, two per vehicle, are on the accepted list. In 2024 the event took in 352 vehicles and 13,068 pounds of electronics.

Keep Midland Beautiful's directory of year-round drop-offs also lists Best Buy for electronics, batteries, and cords, and a rage room on West Texas Avenue that takes appliances and electronics and will schedule a pickup. Call before you load; MRM's own locator warns that sites change hours and rules without notice.

Wipe It Before It Leaves

The TCEQ's program rules make you, not the recycler, responsible for any information left on a computer that is collected, recycled, or reused. The EPA says the same thing in plainer terms: delete personal information, and remove batteries, which may need to be recycled separately. For a drive you cannot or will not wipe, Keep Midland Beautiful's directory lists a local shredding company that destroys hard drives. Whatever route the hardware takes, this step comes first.

Where the Free Routes Stop

Three situations fall outside every program above. The first is a business — an oilfield service office, a clinic, a school — clearing thirty monitors. Manufacturers are only required to take back personal and home-business equipment, the City's stations refuse commercial waste of any type, and Texas Recycles Day is residential only. That is a commercial junk removal job with the data step built in.

The second is an estate with a console TV, three tube sets, and a desktop from every decade. Nobody is boxing a console for a prepaid label, and the retail route takes two TVs a day. Folding them into a property cleanout is how that house actually empties. The City's free large-item pickup, fine print here, lists furniture and appliances as its examples; a TV is not among them, so ask when you call.

The third is the ordinary mixed garage — one working TV worth donating, two dead ones, a printer, a bag of cords — where sorting is the whole chore. That is what a junk pickup service in Midland is for, with the market rates laid out on the cost guide.

More from the blog

• Hauling a Load to the City of Midland Landfill? Read This First
• Midland Picks Up Furniture and Appliances Free — Here's the Fine Print
• What Midland's Trash Trucks Won't Take — and What to Do Instead