How big the market is
For 2025, 150 companies in waste collection, treatment and disposal, and materials recovery filed financial statements. They had 2,318 employees and sales revenue of 1.43 billion lei. Most are small: 113 have fewer than ten employees, and 41 had no sales that year. No company reported remediation as its main activity.
The average gross wage in waste and recycling was 16,070 lei in the fourth quarter of 2025, close to the national average of 16,355 lei.
Which permits apply instead of a licence
The list of permits has no licence for waste. The Law on waste and the Law on industrial emissions divide the activity into three regimes, all handled by the Environment Agency.
Every facility for collecting, storing, recovering or disposing of waste runs on an environmental permit, issued for six years. Large facilities run on an integrated environmental permit, issued for 12 years, with the thresholds set by law: for example, more than 10 tonnes a day for hazardous waste, or more than 75 tonnes a day for recovering non-hazardous waste. The technical file describes the facility, the process, the incoming and outgoing waste, the capacities, emissions monitoring, staff training and the closure of the facility. You apply for the environmental permit when the facility is commissioned or, if an environmental consent was issued for a new facility, within 18 months of commissioning.
A company that buys and resells waste without a treatment facility needs a waste management authorisation, issued within 15 working days for up to six years, after an on-site check by the Environmental Protection Inspectorate. The collective schemes through which producers meet their extended producer responsibility obligations hold the same authorisation.
Three groups need no authorisation: companies whose main activity is collecting and transporting waste (other than municipal and hazardous waste), waste brokers, and waste importers and exporters. They register on the Environment Agency’s list and report their operations electronically. Advertising a waste business without an authorisation or registration is also prohibited.
No sanitary operating authorisation is required: waste activities, including those involving medical waste, are not on the list of activities authorised by the National Agency for Public Health.
The land and the facility
A collection point may operate only on land allocated for that purpose by a decision of the local or district council, developed under the required planning permits and formally accepted on completion. Waste may stay at a collection point for up to nine months, and at a mobile collection facility for up to 48 hours. Waste may be stored only in facilities the company owns: the law prohibits storage in rented premises. Waste for disposal may be stored for up to a year, and waste for recovery for up to three years.
Before construction, the law on environmental impact assessment requires an environmental consent from the Environment Agency for landfills and for facilities that dispose of or recover waste by incineration or chemical treatment. A new site for storing scrap metal, end-of-life vehicles, batteries, electrical equipment or used oils goes through a preliminary assessment, and the Agency decides whether a full assessment is needed.
Waste collection
Waste collection in towns and villages is a public service, which the local authority runs directly or delegates to an operator. Delegation is by public tender, and private operators have the same legal status as municipal companies. Where they have been set up, inter-municipal development associations supervise the operator’s contract, calculate the tariff and collect it from waste holders. Household waste from a region may be disposed of only at the regional non-hazardous waste landfill, and an operator providing several services keeps separate accounts for each service and locality.
Business waste does not involve the town hall. The waste producer pays for collection, transport and treatment under a contract with a specialised company. Packaging, electrical and electronic equipment, batteries, tyres, oils, vehicles and textiles are subject to extended producer responsibility: their waste may be collected only by companies contracted by producers’ individual or collective schemes.
Transport
A waste carrier uses specialised vehicles, has trained staff and keeps chronological records of the waste it carries. Every shipment other than household waste travels with the waste identification form, signed on delivery by the facility receiving the waste. Before each shipment, the waste producer or the authorised operator notifies the Environment Agency for each destination. Lorries over 3.5 tonnes display two white reflective signs with the letter ‘D’. A shipment within the country may take no longer than 48 hours, and the documents are kept for five years. The road haulage licence and the rules for dangerous goods are covered on the road freight transport page.
Scrap metal is handled under the facility’s environmental permit, and collecting it requires a contract with an authorised treatment facility. For metal accepted from private individuals, the law sets specific rules:
- the name, address and ID card details of the person handing over the metal are recorded, and the records are kept for five years;
- the metal undergoes radiological monitoring;
- the site is under video surveillance, and the recordings are kept for 30 days;
- a private individual may be paid no more than 100,000 lei a year in cash;
- private individuals are not paid for works of art, religious objects, industrial machinery, public energy, water or sewerage equipment, or parts of end-of-life products;
- items that resemble such objects must be described and may not be dismantled or passed on for 48 hours;
- batteries, electrical equipment and end-of-life vehicles are not accepted, because they fall under extended producer responsibility.
A waste trader, meaning a company that buys and resells without treating the waste, becomes its owner when transport begins and sells it only to a treatment facility or another trader, under a written contract. It may not accept waste from private individuals and must pay for the waste it receives.
Importing waste is prohibited, except for the categories in the annex to the law, brought in as secondary raw materials by authorised or registered companies. Waste may be exported only to countries that have ratified the Basel Convention, with prior notification through the Environment Agency’s information system.
Paper, cardboard, rubber, plastic and glass waste bought for the buyer’s own business is exempt from VAT without the right to deduct input VAT, and the money private individuals receive for it is not taxed. How VAT works in other cases is explained in our guide to taxes and fees in 2026.
Producers of packaging, electrical equipment, batteries, tyres, oils, vehicles and textiles register on the Environment Agency’s list and finance collection and recycling, usually through a collective scheme. The collective scheme contracts authorised operators to collect and recycle this waste from businesses in every locality. The regulations for each waste stream add their own conditions: a company treating used tyres must be ISO 14001 certified, and the operator dismantling end-of-life vehicles must issue the certificate of destruction. By 25 January 2027, the deposit return scheme for drinks packaging must operate nationwide.
Remediation of soil, water and industrial sites is on the list of activities that require an environmental permit. Asbestos waste is collected separately, packaged, labelled and disposed of at a landfill specially built for it, and collecting, transporting and storing it requires the same permit. Hazardous waste is transported under the rules for dangerous goods. Waste incineration is planned under the law on environmental impact assessment and takes place only in facilities authorised by the Environment Agency.
Medical waste may be collected, under a contract with the medical institution, only by operators authorised under the Law on waste, who confirm its treatment within 180 days. Infectious waste from microbiology laboratories is treated where it is produced and is not handed over to other companies. Radioactive waste falls outside the Law on waste: it is managed by an enterprise holding a radiological authorisation from the National Agency for the Regulation of Nuclear and Radiological Activities.
The management of radioactive waste and hazardous chemical waste is a domain of importance for state security. Anyone acquiring control or a qualifying holding in a company in this domain needs, before investing, the approval of the Council for the Examination of Investments of Importance for State Security, and the €1 million threshold does not apply.
Since 22 August 2026, demolition waste must be collected separately. The permits needed for demolition and for registering a construction company are covered on the construction company page. Emptying septic tanks and cesspools falls under wastewater, on the water and sewerage page.
The Law on waste does not require any particular legal form. In practice, a collection or recycling company is usually an SRL (limited liability company). The independent entrepreneur regime is not an option: no class in section E appears on its list of activities.
We handle the choice of CAEM codes, the articles of association, the filing at the Public Services Agency and the opening of the bank account. For a waste company, we also prepare the applications for the environmental permit and the waste management authorisation, and for a foreign company entering the market we register the Moldovan company or subsidiary. We can take over the accounting, with records of the waste received and of payments to private individuals, from the first month. What each service includes is set out on the corporate services page.
