Costa Rica is facing a critical situation in its solid waste management system due to the limited number of authorized sanitary landfills. The country currently operates only seven approved landfills, most of which are small and handle less than 300 tons of waste per day, primarily serving their local regions. The two largest facilities are located in the Greater Metropolitan Area.
The Aserrà landfill processes about 2,100 tons daily but is expected to reach capacity within 11 months, potentially closing by September 2026. Meanwhile, the La Uruca landfill receives approximately 500 tons each day and may close as early as March or April 2026. Together, these two sites manage around 2,600 tons of waste every day.
If either landfill closes and their waste is redirected to other facilities, it could hasten the exhaustion of remaining landfills. For example, transferring La Uruca’s daily load to Limón would increase that site’s intake from 200 to 700 tons per day and shorten its lifespan from over 15 years to just four years. Similarly, moving half of AserrÃ’s waste to Montes de Oro would reduce that facility’s operational life by about 40 percent—from more than eight years to under five.
This domino effect demonstrates that simply shifting waste between landfills does not resolve the underlying problem but instead worsens the crisis across Costa Rica’s entire solid waste management network.
When a landfill closes, municipalities must transport refuse across provinces. This leads to increased road congestion, delays in municipal and national collection routes, higher transportation costs, greater social pressure on receiving communities, and competition among cantons for disposal space.
Even those landfills with longer projected lifespans—such as Santa Cruz (17 years), Limón (15 years), and Montes de Oro (eight years)—would see significant reductions if forced to accept additional volumes beyond their intended capacity.
To address this issue, key projects have been proposed. One is legislative bill No. 25.271, which would enable emergency measures for waste management and allow up to 800 tons of organic material per day to be processed into energy. Another initiative involves constructing gasification plants aimed at reducing landfill-bound waste from both eastern and western sectors of the Greater Metropolitan Area by converting it into energy; progress has already been made in the eastern zone.
These efforts aim to significantly decrease the volume of final-disposal waste sent to landfills, extend their operational lifespans, and prevent systemic collapse that could impact all provinces nationwide.
“The scenarios show that moving waste from one landfill to another does not solve the problem but rather aggravates the crisis and creates a domino effect that puts at risk the entire country’s waste management system,” stated an official release from Costa Rica’s Ministry of Health.