At present, the calorific values of a variety of combustible solid or liquid substances are determined at commercial laboratories with conventional combustion bomb calorimetric techniques using gram‐size samples. This paper describes the process to calculate the calorific value of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW). Samples of raw refuse were burnt firstly as received and, secondly, after sorting the different combustible components. The higher heating values (HHV) were measured by static bomb calorimetry, based on the procedure given by Hubbard et al. (1).