The Waste Taxation Observatory, an initiative of Fundació ENT, today publishes the study“Waste Charges in Spain 2026”. The study analyses household and commercial waste charges in a sample of 134 municipalities, including all provincial capitals.
Law 7/2022 of 8 April on Waste and Contaminated Soils for a Circular Economy established a three-year deadline for municipal authorities to introduce a mandatory “specific, differentiated and non-deficit fee or non-tax public charge” reflecting the real cost of waste collection, management and treatment operations.
In 2026, for the first time since the report has been produced, all municipalities in the sample have a waste charge or a similar specific mechanism in place. Average cost coverage in 2026 is estimated at 69.0%, an improvement of four percentage points over the previous year, although still far from the 100% coverage required by the Law.
From a qualitative perspective, fixed household charges still remain significant (32.8% of municipalities), although this figure has decreased by 4.6 percentage points compared with 2025. For commercial waste charges, the criteria of “type of activity” and “business floor area” continue to be the most common factors used to differentiate charges.
At the same time, there has been a notable increase in the use of environmental criteria to structure waste charges, both for households and businesses. Thus, 32.8% of the municipalities analysed provide environmentally-oriented tax benefits for households, the most common being home composting, followed by proper waste separation and the use of civic amenity sites. For businesses, 24.6% of municipalities offer some form of environmental tax incentive, most commonly linked to separate collection or waste separation practices and the reduction of food waste.
Pay-as-you-throw systems for households (where the fee depends on the amount of waste generated and selectively collected by each household) are present in 10.5% of the municipalities in the sample, compared to almost negligible levels just a few years ago. Most cases involve charge reductions linked to the use of biowaste containers. Helena Bueno, author of the study, states: “Environmental incentives are playing an increasingly important role in waste charges, as are pay-as-you-throw systems. However, there is still considerable potential for the wider implementation of these systems, which remain a minority practice in Spain, unlike in more advanced countries.”
The study concludes that the weighted average waste charge paid by households in 2026 stands at €119.62 per dwelling. The average increase in household charges compared with 2025 has been 6.4%. For the third consecutive year, charges have risen above the inflation rate. This increase is regarded as a logical response to the legal requirement to cover service costs.
The provisions of Article 11 of Law 7/2022 have posed a challenge for the vast majority of local authorities. As Ignasi Puig (member of Fundació ENT and director of the study) explains: “Although this year we are finally seeing clear improvements in the design of waste charging systems, local authorities as a whole are still slow in adopting the measures legally required by the Law.” He adds: “Spain remains far from meeting the waste management targets established by the European Union, and waste charges can help create the economic incentives needed to encourage behavioural change.”
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