Comparative study of the taxation of waste disposal in Europe

money - coinsThe report Étude comparative de la taxation de l’élimination des dechets en Europe (ADEME 2017) includes the state of play and analysis of the efficiency of taxation of the landfilling and incineration of non-hazardous waste in different European countries.

Through the energy transition law for green growth, France has set the goal to halve its landfilling of waste between 2010 and 2025.

Taxation on landfilling is one of the tools intended to contribute to reaching the goal. The ADEME has commissioned RDC Environment to draw up an inventory of landfill and incineration taxation practices in 10 European countries and to evaluate the transferability of these experiences to the French case.

The report includes a country fact sheet and a comparative cross-sectional analysis of the efficiency of taxation systems with regard to waste management performance.

Among the main lessons of this study:

  • The best-performing countries (i e with low landfilling rate) have the highest storage prices. The level of taxation of landfilling generally explains this high price.
  • The performance achieved also appears to be related to time factors in the tax trajectory (delays, visibility and rapid progression) as well as to the combination with other instruments, in particular bans on landfilling of certain types of waste.

Among the analysed countries France shows lower performance as well as a low effective level of taxation. Therefore higher taxes can be used to reduce the landfilling rate more efficiently in France than in other countries in the study.

Full report – in French – to be found here.