This is the obligation almost nobody knows about — until someone from the city district rings the bell. The rubbish left by your guests is not your household's waste. It is still municipal waste, but you as an entrepreneur are the one who produces it — and that waste does not belong in bins paid for out of households' fees without a contract. Not even in the ones in your own building's courtyard.

In 2024 Prague wrote to roughly 12,500 entrepreneurs without a contract, and the city districts carry out checks continuously. It is settled with one piece of paper and a few hundred crowns a month — only that paper has to exist before your first guest does.

What to do

Why this concerns you

The fee that the owners' association pays for the building covers the waste of non-business persons — the municipality is obliged to take over municipal waste only from them (§ 59 (1) of Act no. 541/2020 Coll.). You are the one in whose activity the waste arises, so you are its producer (§ 5 (1) (a)), and you may hand waste over to the municipal system only on the basis of a written contract with the municipality (§ 62 (2)).

The missing link that guides leave out: the flat in which you provide accommodation is trade business premises (§ 17 of Act no. 455/1991 Coll.) → Business premises signage: the sign an inspection looks for first. Guests leave waste in it as non-business natural persons, so § 62 (1) falls on you: you must ensure separate collection of paper, plastics, glass, metals and biowaste, and have had to since 1 January 2021. That this is your cost is also stated in the methodological recommendation of the Ministry for Regional Development of October 2024.

Variant A — a contract with the municipality

A municipality may, but need not, let entrepreneurs join; if it does, it sets the types of waste and the amount of the payment itself (§ 59 (5) (c)). On the municipality's website look for information about entrepreneurs joining the municipal system; in Prague you will find it on the City of Prague Environment Portal (praha.eu/web/portalzp) on the page about the use of the city system by tradespeople. The advantage is fundamental: anyone who hands over to the municipal system all the municipal waste they produce keeps no running records and makes no reports (§ 62 (3)).

Prague — how it works in practice

Under Prague's Decree no. 20/2022 Coll. (in force since 1 January 2023), an entrepreneur who has joined puts waste at their business premises into separate collection bins provided by the city through a collection company (§ 10 (2)). The methodological instruction of Prague City Hall places „accommodation facilities without their own restaurant with a capacity of up to 10 beds“ in category C — physical bins, not virtual ones.

1. 1Contact the collection company operating in your city district — there are four in the municipal system: Pražské služby, a.s.; AVE Pražské komunální služby, a.s.; IPODEC – ČISTÉ MĚSTO a.s.; KOMWAG, podnik čistoty a údržby města, a.s.
2. 2State the commodities, the volume of the bins and the collection frequency; the minimum volumes and frequencies for category C are set by the annex to the methodological instruction — the collection company will confirm the specific figures.
3. 3Submit an extract from the Commercial or Trade Register and the lease or purchase contract for the building to be served.
4. 4Sign a written contract — the contracting party is the City of Prague represented by the collection company; the template is on the Environment Portal (praha.eu/web/portalzp).
5. 5The collection company tells you the collection days; the payment is made annually by bank transfer (§ 10 (5)).

The contract alone will not open the public containers to you: only an agreed „virtual volume of a public collection bin“ leads to them (§ 10 (3)), and only for paper, plastic and glass. There is no entitlement to it.

Variant B — a commercial collection company

A contract with a collection company outside the municipal system: you order a bin for mixed waste and bins for the sorted fractions. Prague 2026, FCC Česká republika, a 110/120 l bin including rental — once every 14 days CZK 3,163 a year including VAT (CZK 264 a month), once a week CZK 6,120 a year including VAT (CZK 510 a month). The sorted fractions are not in the price list and are charged separately.

In an apartment building: where to put the bin

Bins are stored on the business premises or in the building with the owner's consent, and moved to the collection point only at collection time.

• Agree a place for the bin with the owners' association — a cellar, a courtyard, a storage bay — and have the consent in writing. Buildings in Prague must be equipped with a room for depositing waste or a place for waste bins on the building plot (§ 51 of Prague Regulation no. 10/2016 Coll., the Prague building rules); in an older building an agreement is necessary.
• If there are several apartments in the building, one bin may be used jointly by several entities where the amount of waste is permanently small (§ 10 (2) of Decree no. 20/2022).
• Do not leave bins standing permanently on the pavement: without a permit under § 25 or § 29 of Act no. 13/1997 Coll. the city treats it as grounds for terminating the contract.
• And above all: stop using the building's shared bins for your guests' waste.
• Put an instruction in the guest guide on where the rubbish goes and how to sort it, ideally with a photo of the bins; tell the cleaning team that waste from the apartment belongs in YOUR bins.

What you risk

Using the municipal system without a written contract carries a fine of up to CZK 10,000,000 (§ 121 (2) (o), (5) (c)); it is imposed by the municipal office, in Prague by the city district office (§ 123 (1) (b)) — not by the inspectorate. In practice, city districts usually impose up to CZK 10,000 for waste in someone else's bins, and more for repeat offences.

Further: failing to ensure places for sorting and failing to keep records up to CZK 10,000,000 (§ 121 (2) (n), (4) (a)), failing to retain the records for 5 years up to CZK 1,000,000 (§ 121 (4) (b)) and a missing written contract on handing over the waste up to CZK 1,000,000 (§ 118 (1) (c)). An inspection may ask you to prove that the waste was handed over (§ 15 (2) (b)) — hence those invoices.

The most common mistakes and myths

• „I pay fees through the owners' association, so it is covered.“ — It is not. The fee is tied to the flat as immovable property (§ 10j of Act no. 565/1990 Coll.); for a flat where nobody is resident the payer is the owner (§ 10i (b)) and the owners' association remits it for the building (§ 10n (1)). In Prague it is CZK 0.50 per litre of capacity. You pay the waste contract on top and it cannot be offset.
• „But guests are a 'household', they live there.“ — They are not. Short-term accommodation does not satisfy a housing need (Municipal Court in Prague, 19 August 2021); they are non-business persons depositing waste on your business premises.
• „There is so little of it, it will go unnoticed.“ — The law knows no quantity exemption from a producer's duties (§ 15 (2)).
• „The containers in the street and the collection yard are for everyone.“ — Only for non-business natural persons (§ 59 (1); in Prague § 5 (1) of Decree no. 20/2022).
• „I'll order bag collection from the city.“ — You will not get it any more: bag collection remained only for contracts concluded before 1 January 2023 (§ 15 of Decree no. 20/2022). Some commercial companies offer it.
• „Companies only have to sort from 2025.“ — Business premises have sorted paper, plastics, glass, metals and biowaste since 1 January 2021 (§ 62 (1)); textiles were added from 1 January 2025, but as a duty of municipalities (§ 59 (2)).

Frequently asked questions

Updated: 5 September 2026, verified against the sources listed above. This is informational text, not legal or tax advice — consult a professional about your specific situation.