Riga’s mixed trash ends up on one hill. That hill is nearly full.
The Getliņi landfill, just past Riga’s eastern edge in Rumbula, has room for only seven to eight more years of waste, its operator Getliņi EKO warned reporters on Tuesday, 27 October. After that, the company says, not one more truckload fits.
Key facts
- Getliņi is the biggest household waste landfill in the Baltics and takes about half of Latvia’s household waste.
- Seven to eight years of space left, ten at best, according to Getliņi EKO.
- Over 118,000 tonnes were buried there in 2025, down from 171,000 in 2024.
- By 2035, EU rules let landfills take only 10% of household waste. Latvia buries 30 to 40% now.
- Riga Council owns 97.7% of Getliņi EKO, and Ropaži municipality owns the rest.
When will the Getliņi landfill be full?
Around 2033 or 2034 on the company’s numbers, and 2036 if things go well. “The decision on what to do when the landfill is full basically had to be made yesterday,” Getliņi EKO spokesman Edgars Butāns told LSM, standing on the hill itself.
Sorting is working: better sorting lines, and more of us using the yard bins, mean less gets buried every year. But about 30% of household waste can’t be recycled at all, the company says: used hygiene products, some textiles and plastics, and packaging soaked in food. In a July column on the company’s site, board chair Imants Stirāns puts it plainly: a greasy pizza box stays greasy, however carefully you sort it.
Where will Riga’s trash go next?
Nobody has decided yet. A new landfill would need about 100 hectares somewhere, and each standard 10-hectare waste cell costs around €10 million, per Getliņi EKO. The EU won’t co-fund new landfills either.
The company calls a new landfill the worst option and is pushing waste-to-energy instead: plants that burn what can’t be recycled to make electricity and heat, like the ones Estonia and Lithuania already run. Heat like that could feed the same district network that switched Riga radiators back on when the 2026 heating season started this month. Butāns reckons Latvia is one of only three EU countries that still doesn’t use its waste as a resource. The company’s waste-to-energy campaign is at citsvariants.lv.
The neighbours already feel the hill. Ropaži mayor Aivars Draudiņš told LSM that people living closest deal with the smell and with bits of paper blowing onto the access roads.
Do people in Riga even know?
Mostly not. In an October online survey of 700 people in Riga and nearby municipalities, run for Getliņi EKO, 56% didn’t know the landfill is running out of room, LETA reported via TVNET. 43% expect waste collection to get pricier once it’s full, 45% expect a new landfill anyway, and 53% picked turning waste into energy as the fix.
Riga turns out with rakes and bin bags for the Lielā Talka spring clean-up every year. The trash we bag still has to go somewhere.
Seven years goes fast, Riga. Somebody has to pick plan B.
Illustrative photo: waste containers on Edžiņa gatve, Vecmīlgrāvis (2015), not the Getliņi landfill.
Photo: GreenZeb / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
