Recycling rate of municipal waste
- Eurostat dataset
- cei_wm011
- Reference period
- 2024
- Unit of measure
- % of municipal waste
Key estimates
- EU aggregate (2024): 48.1 % of municipal waste.
- Highest value: Germany at 66.9 % of municipal waste; lowest: Kosovo* at 0.00 % of municipal waste.
- Cross-country mean 39.0 % of municipal waste, standard deviation 18.8, coefficient of variation 48.2% across 24 reporting countries.
- Aggregate change 2013→2024: +38.3% on a constant panel of 21 countries.
How much of Europe's municipal waste actually re-enters the economy? Eurostat dataset cei_wm011 reports recycling rate of municipal waste for 24 reporting countries, with 2024 as the most recent period carrying broad coverage. The European aggregate stands at 48.1 % of municipal waste. The recycling rate is measured at the point of entry into recycling operations, a definition that changed in 2020 and reset comparability.
The five highest values in 2024 are recorded by Germany (66.9), Slovenia (62.4), Netherlands (58.0), Luxembourg (57.3), Belgium (56.2), all expressed in % of municipal waste. At the opposite end of the distribution sit Kosovo* (0.00), Bosnia and Herzegovina (1.10), Montenegro (3.60), Cyprus (15.8), Malta (16.7). while the median country reports 44.3 % of municipal waste against a mean of 39.0 % of municipal waste.
Dispersion is wide: the standard deviation across countries is 18.8 % of municipal waste, giving a coefficient of variation of 48.2%. The mean sits below the median, which indicates that the distribution is pulled by the lower tail rather than being symmetric. Any European average quoted for this indicator therefore describes a synthetic country that few Member States resemble.
Between 2013 and 2024 the summed value across the 21 countries reporting in both periods moved by +38.3%. The largest relative increases are observed in Slovakia (+369.4%), Croatia (+146.3%), Estonia (+106.8%); the largest decreases, or the smallest increases, in Sweden (-4.4%), Germany (+4.9%), France (+5.7%). Because the panel is held constant, this change is not an artefact of countries entering or leaving the sample.
Higher values are the policy-preferred direction for this indicator, so the countries listed at the bottom of the distribution mark the effective size of the European gap: closing it to the level of the fifth-ranked country would require the lowest performer to move by 56.2 % of municipal waste. The estimates above are reproducible: the dataset identifier, filter dimensions and reference period are stated in the methodological note, and the series can be re-downloaded from the Eurostat dissemination API at any time.
Methodological note
Source: Eurostat, dataset cei_wm011 ('Recycling rate of municipal waste'), extracted from the Eurostat dissemination API (JSON-stat 2.0) on the dataset update of 2026-03-30. Filter dimensions: unit=PC. Unit of measure: % of municipal waste. Reference period: 2024. Geographic perimeter: national reporting units with two-character geo codes (24 countries with a non-missing observation); European and euro-area aggregates are excluded from the cross-country statistics and reported separately. Descriptive statistics (mean, median, population standard deviation, coefficient of variation) are computed unweighted over reporting countries. Change over time is computed on a constant panel: only countries with a non-missing observation in both the base and the reference period enter the calculation, which removes composition effects but may differ from the officially published aggregate. No imputation, seasonal adjustment or re-scaling has been applied beyond what Eurostat performs at source. Flagged provisional and estimated observations are retained as published.
Source data
The underlying series can be inspected and re-downloaded from the Eurostat data browser.