Dive Brief:

• Ton-weighted average tipping fees for U.S. municipal solid waste landfills increased 11% from 2021 to 2022, to $60.34 per ton, according to a report from the Environmental Research & Education Foundation released Friday. The increase was the sharpest since at least 2018, and was due in part to rising vehicle manufacturing and maintenance costs, as well as overall inflation, the researchers found.
• The Northeast remains the most expensive region, with weighted average tipping fees reaching $85.41 in 2022, but the Midwest and South Central regions both saw steep increases from 2021 to 2022.
• Though states with waste-to-energy facilities continue to have higher tipping fees on average, states without WTE facilities saw a 14% increase in tipping fees in 2022, compared to a 5% increase for states that had the facilities. 

Dive Insight:

Tipping fees rose following a year of supply chain inconsistencies and high inflation, trends that continue to this day as garbage and trash collection pricing outpaced the overall consumer price index in April.  

The weighted fee average increased by 15.4% since 2018, according to data from EREF. The unweighted average tipping fee was 3.2% lower than the weighted average in 2022. The unweighted average is calculated using raw fee data as opposed to weighting based on the tonnage of MSW a landfill takes in. Small landfills saw their average tonnage rise since 2021 while medium and large landfills saw their tonnage drop, contributing to the discrepancy. 

Large landfills had an unweighted average tip fee of $63.75 while medium landfills charged $50.58 and small landfills charged $60.83. This is the second year in a row that fees at large landfills were higher than at small landfills.

The report follows data released by the Waste Business Journal in May that also tracked a spike in pricing in 2021 that continued into the following year.

EREF found that fees at privately owned facilities are rising far more quickly than at publicly owned facilities. Private facilities charged 17% more than public facilities on average in 2022 and have raised prices 23% since 2017 compared to a 4.7% rise at publicly owned facilities. EREF sampled 348 landfills in total, 135 of which were private and 213 were public.