The company has invested 62 million euros in the last 10 years to modernize its services and meet its goals.

On March 26th, ERSUC held its annual General Assembly, where the main activity indicators, management report, balance sheet and accounts for the 2025 fiscal year, as well as perspectives for the year 2026, were presented.

The figures presented by the ERSUC Board of Directors to all shareholders, also evidenced in the 2025 Report & Accounts, demonstrate the positive evolution of the service, with a 5% increase in Selective Collection compared to 2024. Since 2015, the Trifuxo Selective Collection (yellow, green and blue recycling points) has made significant progress: plastic/metal +76%, glass +41% and paper/cardboard +108%.
Also in terms of containerization, a significant effort has been made in recent years, expanding the network of recycling points available to citizens, totaling 6,017 units in operation (+61% compared to 2015). At the same time, ERSUC modernized its operational fleet through the acquisition of 34 new selective collection vehicles.

Door-to-door collection dedicated to commerce and domestic services also recorded growth of 6% and 29%, respectively, in the last two years.

Investment to meet targets
In 2025, ERSUC received a total of 437,000 tons of urban waste (of which 70,088 tons were collected and selectively delivered), a 2% increase compared to 2024, and a 4.6% increase compared to 2023. Contrary to predictions, in practice, there has been a year-on-year increase in the amount of urban waste produced, figures that have been keeping pace with the growth in population and consumption habits.

Faced with this pressure, ERSUC constantly seeks to modernize and update its operation, reinforcing the efficiency of processes, incorporating more advanced technology and ensuring continuous improvement processes.
In the last ten years, ERSUC has made a total investment of 62 million euros in its operation (4.1 million euros in 2025). This effort also enabled the implementation of two bio-waste treatment units, with a combined capacity to treat approximately 150,000 tons of selectively collected bio-waste.

In 2026, a new investment of €6.8 million is planned, primarily focused on selective collection, with the acquisition of more vehicles, and the upgrading of the packaging lines at the Aveiro and Coimbra Selective Sorting facilities, among others.

This increased investment is now essential to ensure the continuity and quality of service, as well as to meet the environmental obligations assumed by Portugal with the European Union, since meeting the 2030 and 2035 targets constitutes an urgent restructuring of operations that will require the company to substantially increase its activity. These investments are identified in the Action Plan for the Implementation of the Strategic Plan for Urban Waste (PAPERSU), presented to the APA in 2023.

Billed Tariff falls in 2026
The billed tariff in the ERSUC concession area registers a reduction this year, going from €75.30/t in 2025 to €50.25/t in 2026. This decrease results essentially from the revision of the counterpart values ​​defined by ERSAR, increasing the revenue from recyclable materials, which are fully returned to the tariff.

The tariff increase reflects the enormous transformation and demands that the sector has undergone in the last 10 years, especially with the incorporation of investments and costs related to the collection and treatment of selective waste and the undifferentiated treatment of biowaste, in a collective exercise involving treatment systems, such as ERSUC, shareholders (of which the municipalities are a part), and whose setting is carried out by the economic regulator – ERSAR.

This increase is a national reality, to face the enormous challenges that the country has in valuing and recycling its waste: citizens consume more, discard more, without effective waste prevention policies; and the very complexity of the materials and products placed on the market, without recycling quality, requires more advanced solutions.

In a sector with this complexity, meeting environmental goals requires coordinated action, but also an effective strengthening of cooperation and accountability of all actors: municipalities, management entities, regulators, producers, and citizens. It is this integrated view of the system and the clarification of responsibilities that will allow us to strengthen the system's efficiency and ensure a more robust response to the environmental challenges of the coming years.