Fight between waste management companies and ministry over landfill tax
Although Czechs like to boast about how well they sort, the reality is that almost half of domestic waste is taken to landfills outside the city. Over the next 17 years, only a tenth of it should end up there, according to EU plans. It is likely that we will pay extra for a cleaner environment. The cards are now in the hands of the environment ministry and waste companies are waiting impatiently to see what rules it sets.
Landfilling has a tradition in the Czech Republic from the times of socialism - there was a landfill in every ravine behind the town, then still unsecured. Today, we are in a much better position, and 178 legal landfills have to be monitored to ensure that they do not leak into the groundwater and leak methane into the air. Four cities have gone further and built municipal incinerators - first Brno, then Prague, Liberec and most recently Pilsen. This is more expensive than landfilling and the cities decided to pay for it out of their budgets. At least the waste will be used for energy and the flue gases are no longer a problem to clean up.
The Czechs started to learn to sort twenty years ago and today they are able to separate about 38% of their household waste into coloured bins. The EU's Waste Directive envisages that by 2030 this will be 60 per cent, and five per cent more after that.
The direction is set, and in order for the Czech waste environment to change in this way, the Ministry of the Environment must embody it in the upcoming new Waste Act. The main instrument of change will be the so-called landfill tax. It is simple: the higher it is, the more motivated municipalities and companies will be to dispose of their waste differently - to send it to an incinerator or to sort it. Sending it to landfill will no longer be as profitable.
The fee has been the same for nine years
Municipalities now pay CZK 500 per tonne of municipal waste disposed of in landfill. The fee has not moved for nine years and it is the cheapest way to dispose of garbage. The last time the ministry proposed to raise it to CZK 2 000 per tonne was two years ago as part of a new waste bill. It eventually fell completely under the table - landfill companies, which could lose some business, did not like the increase, and there was strong opposition from the Union of Towns and Municipalities. No mayor is popular if he wants to raise the bin fee. Already a large number of municipalities subsidise waste collection and disposal from other taxes.
The first signal that the Czech Republic is about to turn around in waste management came in 2014. That is when the law came into force, according to which waste management companies have to prepare for the fact that untreated municipal waste will not be allowed to landfills from 2024. Companies whose business is built on landfilling and who do not have the possibility to build an incinerator to connect to a thermal power plant are now struggling for their future existence. This includes most of the waste management companies associated with the Czech Waste Management Association - the largest being Marius Pedersen, FCC, Rumpold and Komwag. AVE is also in the association, but after it was bought out by EPH Industries, it gained access to the heating plants. Today, it has a 35 percent stake in the Pilsen incinerator (and heating plant) and wants to develop this waste recovery route further.
Another large private player, Suez (formerly Sita), also has landfills, but has decided to make an economic bet on waste recycling technologies. It has set up a competing Czech Association of Circular Economy.
Companies are concerned about existence
The European direction is therefore clear, the Czech Republic will not be able to avoid a fee increase. It will depend on how much. Landfillers are trying to keep it as low as possible and plan to run municipal waste through a treatment plant to comply with the law so that they can continue to landfill it. This is known as mechanical-biological treatment, where mixed municipal waste is ground up and sorted through a screen into light and heavy fractions. The light fraction can be used as fuel for cement plants - there are six in the Czech Republic. The heavy one could go to landfill. The ministry wants to prevent this and has set a calorific value in a decree - what makes more than 6.5 megajoules of heat must not be dumped on the dump.
However, landfill companies would not lose business completely, there are still almost 30 thousand tonnes of industrial waste. However, the ministry is planning changes in a similar vein there as well. It will set out a list of wastes that are clearly recyclable and must not be landfilled.
Municipalities will play a key role. According to Sonia Jonášová, Director of the Institute of Circular Economy, an increase in the cost of landfilling does not automatically mean an increase in cost for the municipality. "Some municipalities make a profit on waste disposal because they sort well and can manage the raw material
