Landfill tipping fees have stabilized.

Removing phosphorus from wastewater to the low limits in today’s NPDES permits requires coagulants and creates chemical sludge. No way around it. This chemical sludge can significantly drive up your sludge processing and disposal costs. The disposal fees shot up sharply in 2021 and 2022 before leveling off (finally) in 2023.

Source: Environmental Research and Education Foundation, Analysis of MSW Landfill Tipping Fees – 2023, published May 2024. Weighted and unweighted tipping fee averages from 2018 to 2023, from Environmental Research and Education Foundation Analysis of MSW Landfill Tipping Fees – 2023, published May 2024.

Weighted average tipping fees leveled off in 2023, while unweighted fees actually decreased.

Unweighted fees average the fees from all reporting landfills regardless of the amount of waste they took in, providing an average cost per ton across landfills. This unweighted average treats all landfills as though they are the same size in determining the average fee per ton. 

Weighted fees average the tipping based on tonnage processed, so the cost per ton was multiplied by the tonnage, and then the total was averaged by dividing by total tonnage. This provides an average price per ton.

In the Environmental Research and Education Foundation’s (EREF) evaluation of 2023 tipping fees, published in May 2024, the average unweighted tipping fee decreased 3 percent, from $58.47 down to $56.80 nationwide. However, the weighted average only decreased ten cents, from $57.73 down to $57.63.

Not Feeling The Relief? Lower Your Tipping Fees with Neo WaterFX

But if you are not feeling the relief from these modest decreases, it may be because these came on record increases in 2021 and especially 2022, when both weighted and unweighted averages shot up by double digits. Or worse, you may be in the Northeast, where the unweighted tipping fees continued to increase, bucking the national trend.

But there is something you can do to lower your sludge disposal costs significantly.

You can switch to Neo WaterFX for phosphorus removal. Switching to WaterFX will provide three critical benefits:

1. “Set it and forget it” compliance at or near a 1:1 WaterFX to phosphorus ratio. WaterFX not only provides worry free compliance, but you won’t have to keep monitoring and adjusting your coagulant (and caustic) dosage anywhere from 4:1 to 8:1 (sometimes higher) coagulant to phosphorus. 
2. The lower dosage with WaterFX produces a correspondingly lower amount of dry chemical sludge. The dry chemical sludge component is a quarter to an eighth on average the amount produced by other metal salt coagulants. Less sludge produced means less to dispose of.
3. Drier sludge. You don’t dispose of totally dry sludge do you? You process the sludge to try to get out as much water as you can to lower costs of disposal, but the majority is still water. The truth is, other coagulants hold on to water, even with a lot of polymer, making dewatering challenging. The net result still contains a lot of water. WaterFX produces a chemical sludge that helps to release water from the sludge, making it easier to dewater, and producing a much drier sludge. Dispose of less water, and lower costs, with WaterFX.

Of course, you will still have the biological sludge component. But substantial reductions are possible with WaterFX.

Typically, WaterFX clients have seen a significant reduction in total sludge, anywhere from 14 percent to some even up to 20 to 40 percent less sludge sent to landfills. THAT brings real savings!

Enjoy the relief from stabilized landfill costs, but for REAL relief from the high cost of sludge disposal, switch to WaterFX.

Chemical sludge from phosphorus removal from wastewater is not going to go away. But you can lower your sludge quantity and the costs of disposal by switching to WaterFX. Our engineers can help evaluate your wastewater and help you determine if switching is right for you. Contact us for a free consultation.