What to Do With an Unwanted Piano in the UK

Start with one hard fact: your local council will almost certainly not take a piano. A piano is too heavy and too awkward for a normal bulky-waste collection, and the few councils that will deal with one treat it as a special, chargeable job rather than a free pickup. So before you plan anything else, do not assume the council is the answer, because for a piano it usually is not.

First, is it worth anything?

Be honest about the instrument. Most old uprights, the dark mass-produced ones from the early twentieth century, are worth little or nothing to sell, and the cost of repairing or restoring one is far more than the piano would ever fetch. A small number of pianos are genuinely valuable, good-quality grands, well-kept newer uprights, certain names, but they are the exception. If you are not sure, a tuner or a dealer can tell you quickly whether it is worth keeping, selling or letting go. You can find a tuner in our tuners directory or a shop in our piano shops directory.

If it has some value: sell or donate

If the piano is sound and in tune, selling it privately or through a dealer is worth a try, though demand for second-hand uprights is weak and you may wait a long time. Donating is another route. Some schools, churches, community halls and amateur groups will take a decent working piano, but they are choosier than people expect and they almost always need you to arrange and pay for the move, because they cannot shift it themselves. A piano nobody can collect is a piano nobody will take.

If it is not worth keeping: recycling, not the tip

For the great majority of unwanted pianos, the realistic answer is paid removal and recycling. A worn-out upright is not rubbish to be smashed up, even when it has no playing value. It is mostly cast iron, solid timber, copper-wound strings, brass and felt, and a proper disposal service strips and recycles those materials rather than sending the lot to landfill. You will pay for this, because it is a two or three-person lift, often down stairs, followed by responsible disposal. But it is the clean way to be rid of a piano you cannot sell or give away.

Booking a disposal

The PianoSpeed group handles unwanted pianos through our disposal and recycling service. We collect the piano from where it stands, including upstairs, on the same set weekly schedule we run for moves, one collection day per postcode area. The materials are recycled rather than tipped. Enter your postcode for a price and a collection day. There is no pretending the council will do it for free, because for a piano it will not, but the job gets done properly and the piano is dealt with responsibly.