Bin charges set to soar throughout Spain in 2025

Spain’s new waste tax will likely increase household bills by 150%

Homeowners in some parts of Spain may have been surprised by an unknown charge leaving their bank accounts this week. This isn’t anything to be alarmed about, as it’s simply the bi-annual cost of using the municipal bins, but sadly, the changes don’t end there.

Up until now, in most places bin charges were actually included in the Property Tax (IBI) bill twice per year, so most people probably weren’t even aware of them. But the reason the authorities have decided to separate the two bills is that bin charges are going up from next year. Way up.

Residents in Orihuela Costa have been complaining for years about the state of the public bins and the seeming inability of the council to collect the containers when they’re full. Insult was added to serious injury last week when they were informed that their bills would be hiked up by more than 300% from 2025.

However, the new waste tax is going to be applied not just in Alicante, but all throughout Spain, and industry insiders believe it will push the household garbage bill up by a conservative estimate of 150%.

At the moment, local councils cover most of the cost, which is why most people don’t feel the pinch. But a new European law means that, from April 2025 at the very latest, town and city halls will have to pass on the entire cost of collecting, transporting and treating rubbish to residents.

As happened recently with the new regulations requiring hotels to collect personal information from their guests, local authorities have been told that they will need to start charging their citizens for waste collection, but they have no idea how to go about doing it.

What’s more, the charges will vary widely from town to town and city to city, as at the moment it looks as though councils will have to calculate the real cost of the garbage service themselves. 

To further complicate things, residents will be able to offset the bin charges by earning a sort of ‘bonus’ each time they recycle. Monitoring this desirable environmentally-friendly behaviour isn’t going to be straight-forward though.

Each municipality is unique and there is no estimate that can be applied to all of them, but according to estimates from the sector, for a current average bill of 120 euros per year (which represents 40% of the service costs), households would have to pay 180 euros more: 300 euros in total. 

The ultimate goal of the new waste tax is to make consumers aware of the economic damage they suffer from generating too much waste and to gradually implement the principle that ‘the polluter pays’, but councils know the move will be very unpopular.

According to Javier Gijón, Minister for Finance in Badajoz, “We are very concerned about the residents because we do not want to impose more taxes than the citizens are already suffering. Today the VAT on basic products is going up, in January another batch of exempt products will go up to 7.5% [of VAT] and now this too.”

In other news: Housing law proposal aims to get tougher on squatters in Spain

Image: Archive