The anaerobic digestion of landfill leachates mixed with domestic sewage was studied using a batch reactor at laboratory scale. Batch assays were carried out with different proportions of leachate in the feed: 100, 70, 50 and 30% by volume, with and without adjustment of pH, in order to determine the percentage of acidification and methanization, COD removal, anaerobic biodegradability and biomass growth yield. The main effect of the mixing with sewage was a synergistic improvement of the anaerobic treatment of leachates, but in different ways; the greatest improvement in COD removal was obtained when the proportion of leachate in the feed was 70%, but the highest degree of anaerobic biodegradability was obtained with 30% of leachate in the feed. The kinetics of these assays was studied and the experimental data were fitted to a modification of the equation of Chen and Hashimoto. A new concept of 'non-biodegradable fraction' is proposed.