EU Waste Law

It is no longer permitted to accept in a landfill liquid waste, corrosive, oxidising, highly inflammable or flammable waste, hospital and other clinical waste, and whole used tyres (Article 5(3) and Annex II).

In addition, any waste has to be subjected to prior treatment before entering a landfill, unless such treatment is not technically feasible or does not contribute to reducing the quantity of waste or the hazard to human health or the environment (Article 6(a)). The CJEU analysed this requirement to rule that the Member States are required to take all necessary steps in order that a treatment is applied to all wastes suitable for receiving such treatment, which must reduce as much as possible adverse impacts for the environment and the resulting risks for human health, during the entire life of the landfill. They have a duty to ascertain and implement the most appropriate treatment, including the stabilisation of the waste’s organic content, so as to reduce as much as possible the adverse impact of waste on the environment and, therefore, on human health (Case C-323/13 European Commission v Italian Republic).

The acceptance of waste in a given landfill depends on the class to which the landfill belongs: most notably, there are landfill sites for hazardous waste (Article 6), and others for inert waste (Article 4).

The operator of a landfill must charge holders their share of the costs for operating the landfill, decommissioning it and monitoring it during and for thirty years after its closure, and he must provide the competent authority with a financial guarantee covering all these costs when initially applying for the permit to operate the landfill (Article 8 and Article 10).

Lastly, the quantity of biodegradable municipal waste allowed to go to landfill has been reduced to a percentage of the 1995 quantity: 75% from 2006, 50% from 2009 and 35% from 2016, with a possibility to defer the attainment of such targets by no more than four years (Article 5(2)).