What European country recycles the most waste?

Germany leads the way in terms of recycling in the European Union on a volume basis, recycling some 163.6 million tonnes of waste in 2022, data from Eurostat has revealed.

Other countries with notable recycling output include France (153.8 million tonnes), Italy (137 million tonnes), the Netherlands (63 million tonnes), Spain (46.7 million tonnes) and Poland (45.4 million tonnes).

On a percentage basis, Italy recorded the highest share of recycling across Europe, with recycling accounting for 85.6% of total waste treatment.

At the other end of the spectrum, Latvia recycled just 1.2 million tonnes in 2022, with Malta recycling 1.39 million tonnes and Cyprus recycling 1.44 million tonnes – population size clearly playing a part here. No data on recycling was available for Ireland.

Across the European Union, some 813.6 million tonnes of waste was recycled in 2022.

Waste treatment

In 2022, the European Union treated around 1,992 million tonnes of waste, with 61.4% of this waste being recovered and 38.6% being disposed of.

Since 2004, the overall quantity of treated waste has only slightly increased by 5%, but there has been a substantial rise in waste recovery operations, which grew by 40.6%. This surge in recovery operations saw the amount recovered increase from 870 million tonnes in 2004 to 1,223 million tonnes in 2022.

On the other hand, waste disposal dropped significantly over this period, decreasing by 25.1% from 1,027 million tonnes to 769 million tonnes.

On a European level, recycling accounted for 40.8% of total treated waste in 2022, while backfilling made up 14.2% and incineration with energy recovery contributed 6.4%. For disposal methods, 30.2% of waste was landfilled, while 0.4% was incinerated without energy recovery, and 8.0% was subject to other forms of disposal. Read more here.

Waste recycling by EU member state, in tonnes (2022)

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