Spain has a big problem with. In recent years, they follow each other for the country’s delay to fulfill community legislation on urban waste, whose management depends on the municipalities. It is not just about, breach is much greater. This year 2025, the country should recover to recycle. However, the reality is that the European Commission already has open a sanctioning file against Spain for being far from fulfilling the previous objective of 2020 (which was 50%), and almost half of the domestic waste ends today still buried in landfills (more than double the European average).
Now, the situation is not equally bad everywhere. There is an abyss between the municipalities that have not even implanted the brown cube of organic, such as Cádiz, Murcia and San Sebastián de los Reyes, and others that go many years ahead, such as Barcelona and Pamplona, which today already use smart containers that They open with identifying cards, or much smaller locations, such as the Basque people of Zaldibia and the Catalan Argentona, with systems to pay less citizens that best separate (or more those that generate more garbage).
While some set July 2022 as a deadline to collect biorers outsid Organic waste in 2002, more than two decades ago. Paradoxically, it is the Barcelona managers, with much better data, which are most self -critical: “We try to be serious with the numbers, be honest and not deceive ourselves; The reality is that we are still far [de los objetivos europeos]therefore we have to do other different things, ”says Carlos Vázquez, director of the Cleaning and Waste Collection of the Barcelona City Council. “The key is co -responsibility, which means demanding more to the citizen, through bonuses and other systems.”
According to the latest statistics from the Ministry for Ecological Transition (Miteco), in 2022 Spain recovered only 43% of municipal waste for recycling. Of the 17 autonomous communities, only five are saved. However, this is also adding organic matter taken from mixed garbage, which, being more contaminated, should be treated for agricultural soils, bioestabilized, an exception that cannot be counted from 2027. If that part is removed, the percentage State drops to 26% and no one would fulfill. Without these exceptions, the territories with worse separate collection figures are Ceuta (10%), Melilla (12%), Andalusia (15%), Castilla-La Mancha (15%), Extremadura (15.5%) and Murcia ( 17%). And the most advanced, Navarra (44%), Catalonia (43%) and the Basque Country (42%).
There are no official comparisons by municipalities, but the data obtained by the country of municipalities and joints, help to better understand the differences between them. The level of delay depends a lot on organic matter, because it is a good part of the garbage by weight and if mixed with other waste then costs decontaminating. However, the challenge goes much further than putting brown containers. Badajoz does have them, but collects separately just 11% of their waste, adding all cubes to recycle. For its part, Córdoba collects a lot of biorersiduum, but according to 2023 figures, more than a quarter of what it takes from its organic containers, 27.5%, it is not organic matter (when the law does not allow more than 20 % improper). The Madrid City Council or gives its figures.
Although the greatest delay is in the Biorersiduos, the European Commission has also notified of low separated collection rates of paper and cardboard, metals or plastics. In addition to what citizens leave in yellow containers (containers), green (glass) and blue (paper and cardboard), there is part of these materials that are rescued from mixed garbage (the rest fraction), with the help of machines . It is the last chance before landfill or incinerator. “If people do not put it in the corresponding container, we have to try the chain to have them to separate later. Not only for efficiency. “Some of these materials lose or reduce their value if they recover from mixed garbage, companies no longer want them,” says the Canarian.
In the Balearic Islands, the city of Palma de Mallorca separates 30% of its urban waste and its case is striking because it has reduced to zero its landfill spill: everything else that does not recycle, the other 70%, value it, value it, That is, the incineant. Instead, Gijón gets a 36% separate collection and pulls what is mixed directly in Serin’s landfill, but in this case, without screening with machines. The Principality built a plant in 2024 to avoid this, but shortly after opening caught and is under repair. According to ecological transition data, today Spain incinerates 10% of municipal waste (87% in Melilla and 56% in the Balearic Islands) and bury 47% (82% in Ceuta, 75% in Asturias and 70% in Murcia).
Among the cities, there is a great leap in places such as Barcelona, San Sebastián or Pamplona, with selective collection percentages of 41%, 42%and 45%, respectively. As Vázquez details, two things have worked especially in the city: the specialized collection for shops (which generate many waste) and new systems for citizens in which they are more demanded in exchange for bonuses in their garbage fee. “When you link the action to the rate, it is when the citizen begins to separate, either by the bonus or because he feels controlled, because he has to identify to achieve the discount,” says the Catalan head. In the Barcelona neighborhood of Sant Andreu, it has been possible to exceed 70% selective collection when the door -to -door system is combined (which limits home collection to certain days of the week for each material) and smart containers for organic on the street that are closed. To open them, you have to use cards that identify citizens, change are achieved discounts in the garbage rate, which in the Catalan city is on average about 180-190 euros (it is divided into collection and treatment, and is fixed by taking as reference the consumption of water from the domicile).
They also use these closed containers for organic in San Sebastián, where 13,000 donostiarras have requested the card to identify and get discounts in their garbage fee, which in 2025 has risen to 266 euros per year for a type -type house with four occupants. And something curious happens in Pamplona. There the cards are used only as impersonal keys to open the containers, as a resolution of the Spanish data protection agency. Even so, with these containers the selective collection rises from 40 to 60%. As David Campión, president of the Comarca de Pamplona, points Of the majority population, since we have seen that all fractions rise, not just organic. ” Pamplona is now modifying the ordinance to be able to identify citizens and also introduce discounts in the garbage rate, which is about 130 euros per year (it is determined depending on the size of the housing). “Before, for a lot of awareness campaign we did, we saw that we did not advance,” says Campion.
There are smaller municipalities that come much further, such as Zaldibia (Guipuzcoa) and Argentona (Barcelona), put as an example. The first, of 1,740 inhabitants, gets a separate 78% collection. The workers who collect the garbage with the door -to -door system carry a bracelet that automatically read the data of the cubes and thus then bonuses the neighbors who separate more organic and generate less waste from the rest of the rest (not They can be recycled). Discounts can reach 20% (40% for vulnerable families) in the garbage fee, which is 178 euros per year. In this way, they have reduced mixed garbage to 38 kilos per neighbor per year, just one hundred grams per day. For its part, Argentona, of 12,879 inhabitants, reaches 85.9% selective collection. In this town they have three annual rates (between 136 and 160 euros) depending on the number of people of the domicile and each section is entitled to a number of garbage bags for the rest fraction (between 10 and 25) distributed by the City Council. If the neighbors are finished, they have to buy (the 10 pack of 6.5 euros).
“The cheapest thing would be to make a giant bonfire and burn everything,” Ironiza Ioritz Berra Juaristi, mayor of Zaldibia, who emphasizes that doing it well for the environment does not have to be more expensive, but on the contrary, because the system is more efficient if waste is reduced and collected separately. In Zaldibia they have proven it because they need the garbage truck to spend less days, which decreases costs. “The system has to be viable both environmentally and economically,” he says.
The data makes it clear that it is not enough to ask citizens to separate garbage and that it is key to link their collaboration to the garbage fee. However, this generates controversy. The obligation that the localities that still do not have garbage rate approve one before April, according to the, is rejected by the right and part of the local administration. The Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) criticizes that this is the first tax that is imposed on the municipalities and that it is not allowed to be deficient, that is, that it has to cover all the costs of management of municipal waste . “This law is a clear invasion of local autonomy,” says Luis Martínez-Sicluna, general secretary of the FEMP. “We fully share the objectives of the Circular Economy Law, but the one that best knows the reality of each municipality is its mayor, therefore, you will grant them the ability to decide.”
Manuel Guerrero, director of the Circular Economy Foundation, sees it right backwards. As defended, this tax is an ideal indicator to evaluate the work of the mayors: “The waste will allow the citizen to discriminate the good or poor management of their managers. Before it is not that it was not paying for waste management, but in some cases it was done with the IBI, with general taxes, and the individuals did not really know how much it was costing. With the garbage rate, if a citizen has to pay more because his City Council is doing it wrong, now he will know. ”
