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Dump Fees and Diversion in Numbers: What Disposal Costs, Where It’s Rising, and What Never Needed to Go to the Landfill

Updated September 2026

Disposal is the cost on a hauling job that is easiest to forget at quoting time and hardest to avoid at the gate. This guide puts numbers on it: what tipping fees are and how fast they are moving, what EPA’s data says about which materials have somewhere else to go, and the state waste bans that make the hauler — not just the customer — responsible.

What the gate charges

The Environmental Research & Education Foundation surveys landfill tipping fees every year. Its 2024 analysis, based on 351 landfills, found the national average fee rose about 10% in 2024 — the largest year-over-year rise since 2022. Trade-press reports of the same study put the average at about $62 a ton, up from $56.80 in 2023, with private landfills charging about a third more than public ones and large landfills above $70. (EREF’s own summary page states the 10% but not the dollar figure; the report itself sits behind a form.)

The spread between states matters more than the average. From EREF’s 2024 state map:

  • High: Alaska $124, Maine $111, New Hampshire $110, Illinois $93, Wisconsin $86, Pennsylvania $85, Maryland $84, California $84, New York $84, New Jersey $79
  • Middle: Michigan $78, Minnesota $77, Oregon $66, Virginia $64, Ohio $62, Georgia $56, Florida $53, Colorado $53
  • Low: Texas $43, North Carolina $40, Louisiana $39, Alabama $39, Utah $35, Kansas $35, Nebraska $34, Mississippi $32

Those are per-ton averages across each state’s landfills; a transfer station in a city can be well above its state’s figure, and a minimum charge or a per-yard rate for a pickup load can work out to far more per ton. Your own tickets are the only rate card that counts. What the national data adds is direction: fees are rising faster than inflation, and in the Northeast and on the Pacific coast a ton of debris now costs roughly twice what it does in the South.

What is in the load, and where it can go

The EPA’s most recent material-by-material figures are for 2018 (still its latest data year). They show which streams have an established second market and which mostly pay the tip fee:

  • Major appliances: 5.3 million tons generated; 3.1 million tons recycled — about 60% of the material in appliances, including the steel. Scrap yards pay for this.
  • Ferrous metal from durable goods (appliances, furniture frames): 27.8% recycled; landfills still received 10.5 million tons of steel in 2018.
  • Furniture and furnishings: 12.1 million tons; 40 thousand tons recycled — 0.3%; 80% landfilled. This is the junk-removal load, and it mostly pays the fee.
  • Carpet and rugs: 3.4 million tons; 9% recycled, 73% landfilled.
  • Wood in household waste: 18.1 million tons; 17% recycled (mostly pallets); 12.2 million tons landfilled.

For construction and demolition debris, EPA’s 2018 figures put the total at 600 million tons, more than twice all municipal waste, with demolition over 90% of it. Where it went tells you what has a market: concrete 334 million tons to a next use against 71 million landfilled; metal 3.6 million to next use against 1.1 million landfilled — while wood (29.6 million tons landfilled vs 11.2 reused), drywall (13.2 vs 2.1), asphalt shingles (13.0 vs 2.1) and brick (10.8 vs 1.5) went mainly to the landfill. EPA’s words: landfills were the primary destination for C&D wood, shingles, drywall and brick.

EPA does not publish a "share of a junk load that can be diverted" figure, and we won’t invent one. What the data supports is simpler: separate the metal and the clean concrete before the scale, because those have a buyer or a cheaper gate; expect furniture, carpet, drywall and shingles to pay full freight.

Mattresses

Four states run statewide mattress-recycling programs through the Mattress Recycling Council (the industry’s program operator): California, Connecticut, Oregon and Rhode Island. Each funds it with a per-unit fee collected at retail — $18.00 in California (2026), $16.00 in Connecticut (rising to $19.50 on October 1, 2026), $22.50 in Oregon and $22.50 in Rhode Island (2026) — and in return provides drop-off sites that take mattresses at no charge. California alone has collected more than 14 million mattresses since 2016. If you work in those states, the program’s drop-off list is a line item on every cleanout that has a bed in it.

The bans: the hauler is responsible too

Massachusetts is the clearest example of where disposal rules are heading, and its regulator’s page says plainly that both the business that generates the waste and the one that transports it are responsible for complying. Materials banned from disposal in Massachusetts (310 CMR 19.017):

  • Asphalt pavement, brick and concrete
  • Clean gypsum wallboard
  • Ferrous and non-ferrous metals
  • White goods (large appliances)
  • Mattresses (since November 1, 2022)
  • Textiles (since November 1, 2022)
  • Treated and untreated wood and wood waste (from landfills)
  • Whole tires (from landfills)
  • Leaves and yard waste; recyclable paper and cardboard; glass, metal and plastic containers; lead-acid batteries; cathode-ray tubes; commercial food material above a threshold

Read that list against a typical cleanout: the mattress, the old fridge, the scrap metal, the cardboard and the wood are all on it. A transfer station that finds them in a mixed load can reject it or surcharge it, and the state can cite the hauler. Other states have their own lists; the direction everywhere is more materials, not fewer.

What the numbers suggest doing

  • Quote disposal as its own line, from your own tickets by material type, and re-check it each quarter — the national average moved 10% in one year.
  • Photograph every scale ticket against the job it belongs to. When one dump run empties a truck that three jobs filled, each job should carry its share; averaged across the month, the fee hides which jobs lose money.
  • Pull metal and appliances before the scale. They are the one stream with a buyer, and in a growing number of states they cannot legally go in the load anyway.
  • Know the banned list for every state you dump in, and the mattress program if there is one.
  • Treat furniture-heavy jobs as full-fee jobs when pricing. The data says almost none of it is going anywhere but the landfill.

Work it out on your own numbers: Split one dump ticket across the jobs that filled the truck

RelayPoint, in your trade’s words: Movers · Junk removal & hauling · Roll-off & dumpsters · Landscaping & tree service · Portable sanitation & septic

Sources

  1. Environmental Research & Education Foundation — 2024 Analysis of MSW Landfill Tipping Fees (summary page) — 351 landfills; the dollar figure is in the report, not the page
  2. EREF — Tip Fee Report 2024, interactive state map
  3. Waste Advantage Magazine — EREF Report Shows 10% Increase in U.S. Landfill Tipping Fees (July 2025) — trade press reporting EREF’s dollar figures
  4. BioCycle — 2023 Landfill Tip Fees in the U.S. (July 2024) — trade press reporting EREF’s 2023 figures
  5. US EPA — National Overview: Facts and Figures on Materials, Wastes and Recycling — 2018 data
  6. US EPA — Durable Goods: Product-Specific Data
  7. US EPA — Ferrous Metals: Material-Specific Data
  8. US EPA — Wood: Material-Specific Data
  9. US EPA — Construction and Demolition Debris: Material-Specific Data
  10. US EPA — Advancing Sustainable Materials Management: 2018 Fact Sheet (December 2020), Tables 6 and 8
  11. Mattress Recycling Council — Bye Bye Mattress FAQ and state program pages — the program operator
  12. Mattress Recycling Council — 2026 Rhode Island recycling fee adjustment
  13. Mattress Recycling Council — Connecticut program
  14. MassDEP — Waste Disposal Bans

This is general information, not legal, tax or financial advice, and RelayPoint is not a law firm, an accountant or a compliance consultant. The figures are other organisations’ published findings, read in September 2026 at the addresses listed under Sources; they describe the businesses those organisations studied, not yours, and none of them is a result of using RelayPoint.