Junk Removal in Vancouver, BC

Vancouver is the only city we serve that runs its own waste system end to end. It has its own transfer station inside city limits, its own landfill, its own free drop-off centre, and — the part almost nobody explains — its own fee schedule, separate from Metro Vancouver's. An identical load costs a different amount in Vancouver than it does in Surrey, because it is billed under a different bylaw.

The other thing that defines a Vancouver job is that the city is built on lanes. Most residential property here is lane-served rather than driveway-served, a great deal of it has no off-street parking at all, and large parts of the city are permit-parking zones. Where the truck can legally stop, and how far that is from your door, is the first thing we plan on a Vancouver job. It doesn't change the price: that is set by how much junk there is and what kind.

The housing skews small and rented. Vancouver has the region's highest share of renters and its densest apartment stock, which means a lot of our work here is one-bedroom and studio clearouts, end-of-tenancy cleanups, and single heavy items coming down from upper floors of buildings with one small elevator. Alongside that sits the character-home stock — Kitsilano, Mount Pleasant, Grandview, Dunbar — where the job is a basement or an attic reached by a narrow, steep staircase.

Distance is rarely an issue here. Vancouver is compact and the transfer station is inside it, so hauls are short.

Vancouver's apartment stock runs from the West End's older low-rise walk-ups, many with no elevator at all, through the Yaletown and Downtown towers with booked loading bays, to the newer mid-rise along Cambie, Main and Broadway. Walk-ups are the ones people underestimate: a three-storey building with no lift means everything comes down on foot.

The detached stock is mostly pre-war and interwar character housing through Kitsilano, Mount Pleasant, Grandview-Woodland, Hastings-Sunrise, Dunbar, Kerrisdale and Point Grey. These have deep basements, steep narrow stairs and, increasingly, a laneway house behind the main house — which changes where a truck can park and how far the carry is.

South Vancouver, Marpole, Killarney and Renfrew hold more of the post-war stock with actual driveways and garages, and that is where garage and basement cleanouts look most like the rest of the region. Along the Fraser in South Vancouver is the Kent Avenue industrial strip, which is where much of the region's disposal and recycling infrastructure actually sits.

Lanes. Most of residential Vancouver is lane-served. Lanes are narrow, often blocked by a parked car or a bin on collection day, and sometimes unpaved. If your access is by lane, say so when you call — it changes which truck we send.

Permit parking and no driveway. Large parts of the city have permit-only street parking and a great many properties have no off-street parking at all. Where a truck can legally stop, and how far that is from your door, is the first thing we need to know to plan a Vancouver job.

Walk-ups. A West End three- or four-storey walk-up with no elevator is a stairs job from start to finish. Tell us the floor and whether there is a lift.

Towers. Downtown and Yaletown buildings want the loading bay booked in advance, and many underground bays have a height limit that rules out a larger truck. Give us the clearance along with the window.

Character-home stairs. Pre-war basements and attics have steep, narrow, often turning staircases. We plan crew around that rather than forcing an item through a space it does not fit.

Vancouver runs its own disposal system, which matters if you take a load in yourself. The Vancouver South Transfer Station at 377 West Kent Avenue North is a City of Vancouver facility, not a Metro Vancouver one, and it is billed under the City's own schedule: a $20 minimum at peak and $10 off-peak, against $25 and $15 at the regional centres. The per-load caps differ too. The table above is the schedule that applies.

The one that catches people is drywall, and it is the one material we do not haul. It is awkward even to do yourself: the transfer station does not take used residential drywall. The Vancouver Landfill at 5400 72nd Street in Delta does, at $210 per tonne with a $10 minimum, and Metro Vancouver's used-drywall program also takes it at its recycling and waste centres: drywall from your own home only, double-bagged, up to ten 10 kg bags a visit and five visits a year. So drywall leaves the city entirely, and that part of a renovation is yours or a specialist's rather than ours.

Before paying to dispose of anything, it is worth checking the Vancouver Zero Waste Centre at 8588 Yukon Street. A range of material is accepted there free, and separately-deposited recyclables with no drop-off rate of their own are not charged at the City's facilities either.

Vancouver also has an unusually dense cluster of private recyclers, most of them along the Kent Avenue corridor in South Vancouver or the Powell and Triumph Street strip in the east: metal, wood, and mixed construction material all have somewhere close to go. For scrap metal in particular, Vancouver is one of the easier cities in the region to divert rather than dispose.

Dump fees are included in our price, so none of these charges shows up as a separate line on your bill. Usable items are sometimes donated, but we don't promise it, and we publish no diversion rate we cannot evidence — recyclable and stewardship material is separated because the facilities surcharge loads containing it, and because those return programs are free.