Landfill taxes span €11 to €154 per tonne across Europe, RDFIG warns

Landfill taxes across Europe run from roughly €11 to €154 per tonne, and incineration tax burdens range from €8 to about €98 per tonne — a spread that the RDF Industry Group says is now deciding where waste gets treated, rather than plant capacity, efficiency or environmental performance.

That's the headline finding of The Uneven Playing Field: How Europe's Waste Taxes Distort Recovery, Landfill and Trade, a 2026 analysis published by the RDF Industry Group (RDFIG) covering 38 European countries. The report maps landfill taxes and restrictions alongside incineration taxes and concludes the gaps are distorting competition between comparable recovery facilities purely on the basis of location.

What does the patchwork look like?

The numbers tell the story of a fragmented fiscal map:

• Landfill taxes exist in 24 of 38 countries (63%), with rates from approximately €11 to €154 per tonne.
• Incineration taxes exist in 13 of 38 countries (34%), with combined tax burdens from €8 to roughly €98 per tonne.
• The differential means two similar energy-from-waste (EfW) plants can sit at completely different points on the cost curve simply because they're on opposite sides of a border.

For operators and traders moving refuse-derived fuel, that's not an abstraction. A tax gap of over €140 per tonne between the cheapest and priciest landfill regimes is bigger than many gate-fee differences — so the tax line, not the treatment cost, can determine which facility wins the load.

Why does it matter as the ETS expands?

The report's sharpest warning concerns timing. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is expanding, and RDFIG's modelling found that without wider reform, ETS costs could leave landfill taxed more leniently than incineration in more than 10 countries, with the tax differential narrowing towards parity in others.

In other words, carbon pricing applied to EfW — but effectively avoided by landfill — could flip the fiscal hierarchy on its head. The risk is greatest, the report says, where higher carbon costs on EfW coincide with substantial landfill availability and weak fiscal or regulatory restrictions.

It also cautions against piling additional taxation onto recovery without sufficient landfill deterrence, arguing that approach pushes incentives against the waste hierarchy rather than supporting it.

What is RDFIG calling for?

Robert Corijn, Chair of the RDF Industry Group's Policy Working Group, said: "Europe wants to reduce landfill, recover resources and strengthen its energy security. Those ambitions depend on making better use of the infrastructure we already have, across national borders."

He added: "Waste should move because a facility offers suitable capacity, efficient energy recovery or access to decarbonisation infrastructure. National tax differences should not determine which facilities can compete."

Concretely, the report calls on European and national policymakers to:

• Align landfill and EfW taxation so treatment decisions reflect capacity, efficiency and environmental performance instead of national tax burdens.
• Treat recovery capacity collectively across Europe, rather than assuming every country must build enough facilities to treat all of its own residual waste.
• Use cross-border recovery to connect countries with limited treatment options to existing capacity elsewhere — including plants supplying district heat or developing carbon capture and storage.

Does this reach beyond EfW?

Yes. The report warns the implications extend to recycling economics. Higher taxes on sorting and recycling processes that generate residues raise the cost of producing recycled materials, potentially weakening their competitiveness against virgin alternatives. At a moment when recycled-content markets are already fighting price pressure from primary materials, an added fiscal load on residue-generating operations lands directly on the recycler's margin.

Andy Jones, Chair of the RDF Industry Group, framed the stakes in hierarchy terms: "Europe has spent decades building a waste hierarchy designed to deliver better environmental outcomes. As carbon pricing expands and fiscal frameworks evolve, we must ensure that taxation supports that hierarchy rather than undermines it."

The milestone to watch now is how the ETS expansion interacts with each national tax schedule over the coming budget cycles — in the 10-plus countries where landfill could end up the fiscally cheap option, that's where the hierarchy gets tested first.