Sustainable waste management: what the EU is doing
Find out how much waste Europeans generate, how they manage their waste and what measures the EU is taking to ensure environmentally-friendly practices.
Each European generated on average five tonnes of waste in 2022, which adds up to more than 2.2 billion tonnes in total.
About 38.4% of all waste was generated in construction (38.4%), followed by mining and quarrying (22.7%), waste and water services (10.5%), manufacturing (10.4%) and households (8.9%). Other economic activities, mainly services (5.2%) and energy (3.0%), generated the remaining part (9.2%).
Major mineral waste accounts for a large share of total waste (64%). This comes from mining, quarrying, construction and demolition. Apart from major mineral waste, the biggest sources of waste in 2022 were waste and water services (216 million tonnes), households (193 million tonnes) and manufacturing activities (166 million tonnes).
The EU wants to reduce waste and its impact on the environment and promotes the shift towards a more sustainable model known as the circular economy.
Waste treatment in the EU
Almost two billion tonnes of waste were treated in the EU in 2022. This number is not the same as for generated waste, because it includes waste imported into the EU and excludes waste exported from the EU.
Waste can be used in different ways in what is known as waste recovery. Waste can be recycled, used for backfilling (which means replacing soil for slope reclamation or safety or engineering purposes in landscaping) or it can be incinerated and the energy produced out of this process used. In less than two decades, from 2004 to 2022, the amount of recovered waste increased by 40.6%, from 870 to 1,223 million tonnes.
Recovered waste accounted for more than half of the total waste (61.4%) in 2022. The remaining waste was either landfilled (30.2%), incinerated without energy recovery (0.4%) or disposed in some other way (8.0%).
Municipal waste
Municipal waste consists of waste generated by households, shops, offices and public institutions. It accounts for only about 10% of the total waste and is managed by municipal authorities.
In 2022, the volume of generated municipal waste varied significantly between EU countries, from 301 kilos per capita in Romania to 803 kilos per capita in Austria.
Municipal waste management practices across the EU
Waste management practices also vary between EU countries. The EU wants to promote the prevention of waste and the re-use of products as much as possible. If this is not possible, it prefers recycling (including composting), followed by using waste to generate energy.
The most harmful option for the environment and people's health is simply disposing of waste, for example in a landfill, although it's one of the cheapest possibilities. Even though we generate more waste, the way we manage it has improved with more recycling and less landfilling.
60%
of everyday waste collected and treated by municipalities must be reused or recycled by 2030 according to EU targets
The share of recycled municipal waste rose from 19% in 1995 to 48% in 2022, while in the same period the share of landfilled waste dropped from 61% to 23%.
In line with the EU Landfill Directive, EU countries must reduce the amount of municipal waste sent to landfill to 10% or less of the total municipal waste generated by 2035.
Export of waste outside the EU
The EU also exports part of its waste. In 2022, EU exports of waste to non-EU countries reached 32.1 million tonnes. This is a slight decrease of 3% compared to 2021.
The majority of waste exported outside the EU (55%) consists of ferrous metals waste (iron and steel), which mostly goes to Türkiye. The EU exported a lot of paper waste as well (15%), with India being the main destination.
In 2022, 39% of EU waste went to Türkiye (12.4 million tonnes), followed by India (3.5 million tonnes), the UK (2.0 million tonnes), Switzerland (1.6 million tonnes) and Norway (1.6 million tonnes).
The EU wants to counter illegal exports and ensure waste is managed in an environmentally sound manner in the destination countries. In February 2024, Parliament approved stricter rules for waste shipments to non-EU countries. The rules prohibit plastic waste exports to non-OECD countries and introduce stricter conditions for exports to OECD countries. Shipping waste to another EU country is possible only in exceptional circumstances.
The EU’s work to achieve a circular economy
The European Union wants to build a circular and climate-neutral economy by 2050. To achieve that, the EU has introduced in recent years many new measures to reduce waste and make products more sustainable.
New or updated legislation covers ecodesign, packaging, greenwashing, the right to repair, waste management and other key areas.
