EU, amount of waste recovered on the rise. Italy leads the way in recycling

Brussels – The EU recovers 61.4 per cent of waste. Even in 2022, Italy led the way with the highest recycling rate among EU countries.

The Statistical Office of the European Union has determined that, in 2022, approximately 1,992 million tons of waste were processed. While the amount of waste has increased by 5 per cent since 2004, recovered waste has increased from 870 to 1,223 million tons, a growth of nearly 41 per cent.

Recovery includes recycling, backfilling, and incineration with energy recovery. While recycling consists of “any recovery operation by which waste materials are reprocessed into products, materials, or substances, whether for original or other purposes,” filling is an operation whereby “suitable wastes are used for reclamation purposes in excavated areas or for engineering purposes in the landscape.” At the Union level, recycling goes the most (40.8 per cent), followed by backfilling (14.2 per cent) and energy recovery (6.4 per cent).

The amount of waste subject to disposal only from 2004–2022 has decreased by 25.1 per cent. In 2022, the majority remained in landfills.

Considering the Green Deal’s goal of climate neutrality by 2050, it became necessary to also act on the circular economy, as announced in the related Action Plan. In November 2022, the Commission proposed new EU-wide rules on packaging and introduced the “right of reparation directive,” pushing the idea that fewer discarded products mean less waste and pollution. In parallel, a transition to using biodegradable and compostable materials is taking place.

European countries behave in different ways regarding waste management, also shown by the latest Eurostat results. The differences in results are very clear among European countries: Italy is the best in recycling with 85.6 per cent, followed by Belgium and Slovakia. Slovenia leads the way in recycling via backfilling, while Romania, Bulgaria, Finland, Ireland, and Sweden lag behind. Between 2018 and 2020, the latter was the ground for the “biggest environmental crime in Sweden in terms of scope and organization“.