Dispose of Old Mercury Thermostats Properly with Thermostat Recycling!

It is ILLEGAL to throw away mercury thermostats! Remember the Three R’s: Remove, Replace, Recycle!

Most modern buildings built in the past twenty years use programmable, LED-display thermostats, but you’ve undoubtedly seen the old school mercury thermostats at plenty of homes and businesses. Like any item containing mercury, thermostats are classified as a universal waste, and must be recycled. Mercury is a bio-toxin hazardous to our health and can cause serious environmental damage if improperly disposed of in landfills.

To encourage the proper dispose of mercury thermostats, Thermostat Recycling Corporation (TRC), a non-profit made up of thermostat manufacturers, has developed a product stewardship program. TRC has partnered with Heating and Air Conditioning (HVAC) wholesalers, thermostat retailers, and Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) collection sites, to collect old mercury thermostats from the public in a drop-off program. Now, proper recycling of old thermostats is easier than ever!

In 2017, nearly 18,000 mercury thermostats were recycled under this program in California alone.

Since the Thermostat Recycling Corporation launched in 1998, they have collected more than 2.4 MILLION thermostats; that’s more than 11 TONS of mercury diverted from the waste stream.

You can recycle your old mercury thermostats at the following locations:

Take to a local participating program take-back wholesales.  Click here to search for drop-off locations by zip codes.

You can also recycle mercury thermostats at an LA County-run, HHW S.A.F.E. collection center. Click here for a list of local HHW collection centers.

• Gaffey Street S.A.F.E. Center
  • 1400 N. Gaffey St., San Pedro, CA 90731
  • Open Saturdays & Sundays, 9:00am – 3:00pm
• Hyperion S.A.F.E. Center
  • 7660 W. Imperial Hwy., Gate B, Playa Del Rey, CA 90293
  • Open Saturdays & Sundays, 9:00am – 3:00pm

Please call collection sites for hours of operation and to confirm their participation in the Thermostat Recycling program.

To learn more about Thermostat Recycling, check out this video and visit the Thermostat Recycling Corporation’s website.