The municipal tax ordinances of 2025 have already entered into force and, without a doubt, the new garbage rates are the main protagonists. The contaminated waste and soil law for a circular economy requires municipalities to establish a new payment system per generation that takes into account the cost of the operations of collection, transport and treatment of urban waste. This standard is shield in several European directives and the sustainable development objectives included in the 2030 Agenda.
With this measure of state level, It is sought to reinforce the collection by separate fractions of local competition waste and, with this, to increase the reuse and recycled rates in Spain, which are below the European average. To achieve this, the municipalities must prioritize the most efficient collection models, such as door to door or the use of closed or intelligent containers that guarantee similar collection ratios. And it is that the law does not determine a single modality to make the aforementioned collected by separate fractions.
Therefore, municipalities can decide which garbage collection service best fits their needs, as long as they comply with the purposes of the standard. In any case, since it is a local service financed with a rate, the total amount will be distributed through quotas among all users/beneficiaries. For now, what many taxpayers have already noticed is an important rise in rates due to the highest cost of the new selective collection systems.
Since the objective of the law is to promote the recycling and reduction of waste produced by citizens, the new rate should take into account the real amount of waste generated and provide incentives for their reduction and separation in origin, making the principle a reality of “who pollutes pay”. Therefore, The rate should encourage good behaviors And, for this, it would be necessary for the calculation of the quota to somehow contemplate the volume, frequency and recycling that each taxpayer performs, so that he may notice in the receipt its greater or lesser care.
However, numerous municipalities have decided to calculate the distribution of the quotas based on criteria such as the surface of the real estate, the registered people or the water consumption. Although these criteria may be indiciaries of the amount of garbage produced, in no case allow to establish a true rate per generation, nor link the fee to pay with the ability to recycle or reduce more and better. In short, With these distribution criteria, recycling is not encouraged since the calculation of the quota does not depend on the amount of really generated garbage.
I would like to doubt the criterion of water consumption as a determinant of waste production. Although it is said that it is endorsed by the recent judgment of the Supreme Court on the garbage fee of the Barcelona City Council, the truth is that the Court adds its decision with “attending to the standard applicable at the time of approval of the rate”, which is prior to the current Waste Law, so I consider that this criterion would no longer be valid. Besides, link The generation of waste exclusively to water consumption, the only thing that can encourage is to consume less water But not to generate less garbage, since, for the purpose of calculating the quota, it will not matter if it is recycled more or less, which breaches the purpose of the state norm.
Certainly, neither the size of the housing, nor the consumption of water, nor any other criteria that does not take into account the true garbage produced, serve to encourage recycling, nor allow the fee to be paid according to the generation of waste. Therefore, in my opinion, these rates would not comply with the provisions of the law and could be challenged. Of course, the process, long and uncertain, does not help make such a decision, but the same happened with the municipal surplus value in cases of lack of increase in value in the transmission of real estate and many, many years later the victory was achieved.
With more than eight thousand municipalities in Spain, and taking into account that the amount of the rate depends on each town hall and the calculation method that has chosen, You will see how many end before the courts and how many comply with the provisions of law. Meanwhile, we will have to continue recycling for the good of the planet because, for the sake of our pockets, it seems that at the moment in many municipalities it does not touch.
Benjamí Anglès Juanpere is an aggregate professor of financial and tax law of the UOC
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