Furniture, carpet and other oversized household waste can be taken without charge to the Resource Recovery Plant this weekend.

The Resource Recovery Plant, 110 Center Ave., is holding a free day from 8 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Saturday for residents to get rid of their extra junk. Fees are normally $8 for a carload and $22 for a truckload.

Free days, which are established through the Ames City Council, have been offered at the plant for more than 25 years, said John Pohlman, plant superintendent.

“[The City] Council has consistently supported the free day to help Ames residents clean up and get rid of extra stuff they deem not reusable,” said Russ Cross, City Councilman. “It’s a very popular day for the plant, and it’s beneficial to neighborhoods because it helps them clean up extra trash that won’t fit into trash cans.”

The burnable garbage at the Resource Recovery Plant becomes refuse-derived fuel, which is piped to the city’s power plant and used as a supplement fuel in the coal boilers to generate electricity, according to the City of Ames Web site. The nonburnable material is sent to the landfill to be shredded.

The plant offers free days twice a year — one in the spring and one in the fall. Appliances, such as refrigerators or microwaves, will be accepted for a $20 fee, and construction and demolition debris will not be accepted, Pohlman said.

“We still charge for appliances because of direct fees we have to pay,” he said. “We average about 100 to 110 appliances a month and if we accepted them for free on free day, we physically wouldn’t be able to handle it because people would wait to bring them in.”