Have the article read by OpenAI (Beta). Please note that AI translations may take some time to process.Every year, all economic activities and households in the EU generate more than two billion tonnes of waste. That is equivalent to 4.8 tonnes of waste per capita.
According to the European Environment Agency (EEA), the overall recycling rate in 2020 stood at 46 percent. This figure includes three waste streams: municipal, packaging as well as electrical and electronic waste. In 2021, 64 percent of packaging waste, 49 percent of municipal waste and 39 percent percent of so-called e-waste was recycled. However, the majority of waste in 2021 was still disposed of through landfill operations and incineration.
“We are still far from the ambition to double the Union’s circularity rate by 2030,” the EEA said, adding that there was a “low or moderate likelihood” that EU’s ambitions would be “achieved in the coming years”.
The EU’s plan for a circular economy aims to lessen the strain on natural resources by doubling its circular material use rate (CMUR) between 2020-2030. CMUR reflects how much recycled waste contributes to the total material used in the economy.
At the heart of the problem, according to the EEA, are business models in which products have a very short lifespan – if they are even used at all. At the same time, with its circularity rate of 11.5 percent in 2022, Europe still uses more recycled materials than any other region in the world.
EU legislation on waste, including more than 30 binding targets for the 2015-2030 period, is a key driver in increasing the levels of recycling in the Union. In March, the Union made further progress in waste regulation in a bid to meet the bloc’s climate goals, aiming at increased recycling and cutting of plastic.
On March 25, the Council of the EU adopted a revision of the Waste Shipment Regulation. According to this EU states are to export less waste to third countries and recycle more themselves.
Under the new rule, waste may only be exported to countries outside the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) if the destination country explicitly agrees and can prove that the waste is processed in an environmentally friendly manner to try to reach the goals of circular economy and climate neutrality.
According to figures from the statistics office Eurostat, the EU exported over 32 million tonnes of waste to non-EU countries in 2022. Of this, 39 percent went to Turkey (12.4 million tonnes), followed by India (3.5 million tonnes), the United Kingdom (2.0 million tonnes), Switzerland (1.6 million tonnes) and Norway (1.6 million tonnes).
What are recent developments in the EU?
On March 13, the European Parliament approved a proposal to curb food and textile waste. EU lawmakers voted to slash 40 percent of the food waste generated by households, retailers and restaurants by 2030, while toughening rules on textile waste linked to so-called “fast-fashion”. Brussels estimates that the 27-nation bloc generates 60 million tonnes of food waste a year – or 131 kilograms per person.
On March 4, EU negotiators agreed on the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), to cut back on packaging waste by five percent by 2030, compared to the amount in 2018. The aim is to reduce this further by ten percent in 2035 and 15 percent by 2040. Single-use plastics in cafés and restaurants will be banned from 2030.
The text is a key element of the EU’s environmental goals under the Green Deal. “This regulation aims to reduce waste caused by packaging, making it more sustainable, while ensuring the highest waste management standards,” the government of Belgium, which holds the rotating EU presidency, said on X.
Still, according to a new report the OECD anticipates that the amount of plastic packaging will triple by 2060. Some environmentalists argue that increased recycling does not address the root problem.
Looking at waste across the bloc: give-and-take?
While some EU countries focus on expanding their recycling capabilities, import – or export – of waste is an important part of other nations’ economies.
Sweden
In Sweden, a massive high-tech sorting plant dubbed “Site Zero” has been in operation since late 2023, described by the organisation as “the world’s largest and most modern facility for plastic recycling”.
Mattias Philipsson, CEO of Swedish Plastic Recycling, a non-profit organisation owned by the plastic industry, said the site has “the capacity to handle the equivalent of all of Sweden’s plastic waste”.
In 2022, only 35 percent of plastic waste was recycled, according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, less than the EU average of 40 percent. The incineration of plastic waste, which is used to produce both heat and electricity, accounts for about seven percent of Sweden’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Portugal
In 2021, according to the most recent official data, 71,182 tonnes of hazardous waste left Portugal for recovery and 1,385 for disposal. Usually, that type of waste requires special disposal treatment. 1,066 million tonnes of non-hazardous waste were shipped or exported.
According to data from the Portuguese Environment Agency, Spain is the main country of destination, receiving 80 per cent of the total non-hazardous waste while Belgian incinerators received 90 per cent of the hazardous waste. Regarding exports outside the EU, Portugal only exports non-hazardous waste to Morocco (597 tonnes for recovery).
The country also imports waste: 264,874 tonnes of hazardous waste came in, most of it for recovery (244,959) and disposal (almost 20,000 tonnes). The country also received 1.817 million tonnes of non-hazardous waste.
Slovenia
According to the Slovenian Environment Agency, Slovenia has generated an average of around
135,000 tonnes of hazardous waste per year between 2012-2021, accounting for one to three percent of all waste.
During this period, the country exported an annual average of 61,400 tonnes of hazardous waste for final treatment/disposal, mainly to EU and Balkan countries, while it imported an average of 34,200 tonnes of hazardous waste per year.
Romania
According to official statistics, Romania is currently ranking 26th among the 27 EU member states when it comes to recycling, with its recycled municipal waste exceeding by only 13 per cent of the total waste.
By implementing a Guarantee-Return System (SGR) in November 2023 to collect beverage packaging, more than 220 million packages were returned in the first three months. At present, two regional centres are operating with another five set to open in the next three months.
Bulgaria
Waste import designed for utilisation is extremely important for the Bulgarian economy and, in particular, for the processing industry, according to Environment and Water Minister Julian Popov. This waste was predominantly of non-hazardous nature and of high quality and value as raw material, he said.
In 2021, the amount of household waste generated in Bulgaria decreased by 25 percent compared to 2010, according to the National Report on the State and Protection of the Environment but it still fell short of the 51 percent recycling goal, according to data by the Bulgarian Executive Environment Agency.
The trend of meeting the recycling targets for electrical and electronic equipment waste has been maintained. The increase in recycled materials utilised in the country’s economy is up to 4.90 percent, the report shows.
In November 2023, the European Commission called on several countries, including Bulgaria, to properly implement EU rules on waste treatment.
Textile waste: recycled plastic “not circularity”
To square the recycling circle, fashion brands have been using recycled plastic – to the frustration of the food industry, which pays for the collection of used PET bottles.
“Let’s be clear: this is not circularity,” the beverage industry wrote in a withering open letter to the European Parliament last year, denouncing the “worrying trend” of the fashion industry making “green claims related to the use of recycled material”.
Less than one percent of textiles worldwide are recycled at present, the EU says, with 12.6 million tonnes of textile waste generated in the EU each year.
A recent EEA study showed that four to nine percent of textiles introduced to the European market ended up being destroyed without ever having been used, leading to 5.6 million tonnes of CO2 emissions.
Nearly half of all textile waste collected in Europe ends up in African second-hand markets or more often it is tipped into “open landfills”, according to EEA figures from 2019. Another 41 percent of the bloc’s textile waste goes to Asia, mostly “to dedicated economic zones where they are sorted and processed”.
NGOs said much of Europe’s waste clothes sent to Asia go to “Export Processing Zones”, which Paul Roeland of the Clean Clothes Campaign NGO said were “notorious for providing ‘lawless’ exclaves, where even the low labour standards of Pakistan and India are not observed”.
Switched off: e-waste efforts lack energy
Around 62 million tonnes of old or unwanted gadgets were thrown out in 2022.
The volume of so-called e-waste, which includes mobile phones, TVs and vapes, is “rising five times faster than documented recycling”, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), who define e-waste as any discarded product with a plug or battery.
The amount recorded in 2022 was over 80 percent higher than in 2010. “Billions of dollars worth of strategically valuable resources squandered, dumped. Just one percent of rare earth element demand is met by e-waste recycling,” they warned.
Food Waste: “global tragedy”
Households around the world threw away one billion meals every single day in 2022 in what the United Nations’ latest Food Waste Index Report on March 27 called a “global tragedy” of food waste. More than one trillion dollars worth of food was binned by households and businesses at a time when nearly 800 million people were going hungry.
It said that more than one billion tonnes of food – almost one fifth of all the produce available on the market – was wasted in 2022, most of it by households.
“If food waste was a country, it would be the third biggest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions on the planet behind the US and China,” said Richard Swannell from non-profit organisation WRAP, who co-authored the report with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
The report is just the second on global food waste compiled by the UN and provides the most complete picture to date.
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