Russian Environmental Operator Plans 87 Waste Facilities for 2026 With 8.74 Mln Tonnes of Processing Capacity

Summary: public-law company Russian Environmental Operator (PPK REO) said that by the end of 2026, 87 waste management infrastructure objects are to be commissioned in Russian regions as planned, with processing capacity of 8.74 million tonnes per year and recycling capacity of 3.66 million tonnes per year, the company's press service reported.

The 2026 plan

According to the PPK REO press service, the combined capacity of the new objects for waste processing is planned at 8.74 million tonnes per year and for recycling at 3.66 million tonnes per year. In addition, modern placement sites with a capacity of 5.96 million tonnes of municipal solid waste per year are to appear. The company describes the plans as a continuation of the large-scale infrastructure construction launched with the start of the waste reform.

Seven years of the reform in numbers

In 2019-2025, since the start of the waste reform, 372 municipal solid waste management objects were commissioned:

200 processing objects with a combined capacity of 24.68 million tonnes;
113 recycling objects with a capacity of 7.56 million tonnes;
20 neutralization objects with a capacity of 0.48 million tonnes;
39 waste placement objects with a capacity of 7 million tonnes.

In total, from 2025 through 2030, another 408 integrated municipal solid waste objects will be commissioned in the regions thanks to various support measures. This made it possible to form the infrastructure framework, the key direction of the industry's formation, and modern infrastructure becomes the support for building a circular economy in the country, noted Denis Butsaev (Denis Butsaev), Deputy Minister of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation.

The national project frame and regulatory fixes

Since 2025 the country has been implementing the new national project Ecological Wellbeing. Under one of its directions, the task is set to form a circular economy ensuring by 2030 the sorting of 100 percent of annually generated municipal solid waste, the burial of no more than 50 percent of such waste, and the involvement of at least 25 percent of production and consumption waste into economic turnover as secondary resources and raw materials.

The construction of waste infrastructure in the regions remained an acute topic discussed at various levels throughout the past year. The State Duma adopted a bill extending, until 1 January 2028, the operating term of waste placement objects that lack the required documentation and were to close from 1 January 2026. In addition, at the beginning of the current year the Ministry of Natural Resources proposed adjusting the rules for granting subsidies to projects for the construction or reconstruction of integrated municipal solid waste objects under concession agreements; the measures are meant to help regional authorities cope with the rising cost of building materials, machinery and equipment.

What the plan changes for the company

For PPK REO the schedule of 87 objects for 2026 is an operational test of the entire model: concession subsidies, the extension of undocumented landfills and the national project targets converge in a single calendar year. The company, acting as the operator of federal municipal solid waste infrastructure, receives the densest commissioning schedule since the reform began, while regions receive obligations whose execution will be measured in tonnes of processing and recycling rather than in announcements. More information about the company is available on its website: https://reo.ru.

Contact

PPK Russian Environmental Operator, Moscow, Russia. Media and partner enquiries are handled through the company's press service and corporate website https://reo.ru.