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Indicator Assessment
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Generation of total wastes excluding mineral wastes in the EU-27 decreased by 6% between 2004 and 2008. At the sectoral level waste generation by households, the construction industry and the water supply, sewerage and waste management sector increased while waste from other sectors saw absolute reductions. Increases in waste from the water supply sector can be viewed as a positive trend having resulted from improvements in waste water treatment in the EU. Although relatively decoupled from growth in GDP, the continuing rise in annual generation of household waste is of concern, suggesting a rise in consumption of material goods.
Development in generation of non-mineral wastes by economic activity
Note: Absolute amounts of waste generation in EU27 for all economic activity categories excluding mineral wastes
Development in generation of non-mineral wastes by economic activity
Note: Time series (indexed to base year 2004) of waste generation in EU27 for all economic activity categories excluding mineral wastes
The indicator shows developments in total generation of wastes by sector excluding mineral wastes. Mineral wastes have been excluded because the sheer volume of these wastes dominates over all other waste types and hides developments of other waste types. For example, mineral wastes from the quarrying and mining sector alone stood at 716 million tonnes in 2008, nearly as high as total non-mineral wastes from all sectors at 886 million tonnes for the same year.
Such mineral wastes, dominated by mine tailings and overburden, are in general inert and present little relevance to SCP either in terms of material input further up the production chain which could be avoided, or hazardous waste presenting an environmental risk (contaminated soils present an exception to this general rule).
Non-mineral waste generation is dominated by manufacturing, households, the service sector and the water supply, sewerage and waste management sector. The majority of wastes from the first three sectors represent resource inputs upstream i.e. along the production of finished or semi-finished goods which are then consumed by the sector. Therefore a reduction in waste generation by these sectors implies a reduction in demand for resources during upstream processes and in associated environmental pressures.
Waste generated by these sectors is also typically non-inert and potentially cause environmental impact during treatment via emissions to air, soil or water including GHGs. A reduction in waste generation can also reduce these environmental pressures.
Total generation of non-mineral wastes in the EU-27 decreased by 6% between 2004 and 2008, most of this decrease occurring over the second two year period. GDP increased by 9% over the same period. Thus the general picture for waste prevention as part of SCP appears to be positive.
When viewed at the sectoral level the picture is more nuanced. All apart from 3 sectors saw absolute decoupling of non-mineral waste generation from GDP.
The most dramatic apparent progress was made in the agricultural sector with a 44% reduction of non-mineral wastes from this sector over the four year period. However, it appears that these reductions have mostly resulted from changes in reporting practices. Reporting on agricultural wastes is very inconsistent between countries. A few include manure in their reporting while most don’t. It is such differences in reporting that cause three countries – Romania, Poland and Spain – to be responsible for approx. 70% of non-mineral agricultural wastes reported in 2004. All three countries reported significant reductions in these wastes between 2004 and 2008. Hungary, Greece, Lithuania and Belgium have also seen large reductions in reported agricultural wastes during this period.
According to a waste statistics validation report for Eurostat (Argus, 2011) the large reductions reported in the countries (with the exception of Belgium) were a result of either changes in reporting during the period or a result of an increasing amount of manure reused in agriculture. Changes in reporting fell into three types: a) ceasing to include manure in waste statistics; b) ceasing to include the fraction of manure which is reused in agriculture; and c) ceasing reporting on agricultural wastes altogether.
Of these causes of reductions in reported agricultural wastes, only increases in the quantities of manure reused on land as a fertiliser can be considered to be a change in practice and a waste prevention measure. Real reductions in waste generated by agriculture are therefore far lower than the apparent 44% reduction reported. This will also have had some influence on the 6% decrease in total non-mineral wastes from all sectors across the EU-27 as a whole. If agricultural waste was left out of the total, non-mineral waste generation would have seen only a 2% reduction 2004-2008.
Reductions in sectors other than agriculture were 11% or less. Generation in waste from the manufacturing and services sectors saw reductions of 11% and 4% respectively implying reductions in resource inputs upstream and reductions of environmental pressures from waste treatment downstream. Waste reduction performance in manufacturing differed between the various manufacturing industries. In the EU-27 as a whole, the largest waste reductions were seen in the manufacturing of Food products (down 8.6 Mt), Wood products (7.7 Mt), Basic metals and fabricated metal products (7.2 Mt), Electronics (4.0 Mt) and Textiles (3.3 Mt). Manufacture of coke and petroleum, and manufacture of furniture and toys both saw increases of over 1 million tonnes of wastes. The picture at the country level is variable with different sets of manufacturing industries contributing to increases and reductions in aste generation.
Reductions in waste generation in manufacturing might be thought to be a result of the global economic recession that began towards the end of the reporting period. However, the largest reductions in waste generation occurred during 2004-2006, rather than during the second reporting period.
Moreover, examination of economic output data for these industries (output of the EU-KLEMS project) do not show strong coupling between economic output and generation of waste for those industries that achieved large reductions in waste generation. The possible exceptions are the Textiles and Food Manufacturing Industries which had the lowest growth rates at basic prices at 1% and 6% respectively 2004-2006. However, these dampened growth rates (or shrinkage for textiles in real terms) can’t on their own explain the 19% and 9% reductions in generated waste from the textiles and food industry respectively over the same period.
The waste generation reductions from the manufacturing industry can be a result of resource productivity improvements or changes in the make-up of individual manufacturing industries during the reporting period i.e. a change from heavier to lighter manufacturing within each branch.
Waste from electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply decreased by 11%, corresponding well with the 9% decrease in coal used for electricity production over the same period (see EEA Indicator ENER27).
The construction sector, households and the water supply, sewerage and waste treatment sector, meanwhile, saw increases in waste generation of 9% and 4% and 15% respectively. Of these, only waste generation by households have shown even relative decoupling from GDP. The continuing growth in waste generation by households is of particular concern suggesting a continuing growth in the consumption of material goods and perhaps increasing use of packaging by retailers. Although material recovery is generally increasing (see indicators SCP015 and SCP016) environmental pressures would be more effectively avoided through avoiding resource inputs into production processes and thus preventing waste generation downstream.
Increases in waste generation from the water supply and sewerage sector is mainly caused by increases in sewage sludge generated at water treatment plants. This should be seen as a positive trend indicating improvements in waste water treatment in the EU due, in part, to the implementation of the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive.
It should be noted that the waste generation figures from all sectors when summed together present some elements of double counting. Much of the waste generated by the waste management sector is secondary waste resulting from waste treatment. For example bottom ash from incinerators, or residual waste from waste sorting and recycling plants. The mass of this waste has already been recorded once in the waste generated by other sectors so such secondary waste represents double counting. From the next reporting period (reporting on 2010) these secondary wastes will become distinguishable from other wastes. They will remain shown in the indicator but will be clearly distinguished from other wastes so that trends in waste generation excluding secondary wastes can also be followed.
This indicator shows the generation of waste, excluding mineral wastes from households and from key NACE* sectors (according to Rev. 2 categories**) in the EU-27 over time, both in absolute levels and indexed to 2004 levels, together with developments in GDP over the period 2004 to 2008.
The indicator distinguishes waste generated by the following sectors:
The following mineral waste categories have been excluded from the totals for each sector (waste codes according to the EU Waste Statistics Regulation):
These mineral wastes have been removed due to the domination of such wastes in total waste, making it difficult to detect changes in other categories, and due to the very different treatment required by such mineral wastes compared to other types of waste.
*NACE ’is the acronym used to designate the various statistical classifications of economic activities developed since 1970 in the European Union (EU).’ (http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/statistics_explained/index.php/NACE_backgrounds).
**Eurostat, EC (2008). NACE Rev. 2 – Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community. Eurostat Methodologies and Working Papers. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cache/ITY_OFFPUB/KS-RA-07-015/EN/KS-RA-07-015-EN.PDF
Non-mineral wastes generated by economic activity expressed both in millions of tonnes and indexed to 2004 levels. GDP indexed to 2004 levels.
This question concerns prevention and minimisation of waste. The international policy framework for SCP was recently agreed at Rio+20 with the adoption of the ten year framework for action on sustainable consumption and production. The declaration ‘The future we want’ recognised the need to change unsustainable and promote sustainable patterns of consumption and production. More specifically the declaration states that ‘We recognize the importance of adopting a life-cycle approach and of further development and implementation of policies for resource efficiency and environmentally sound waste management. We therefore commit to further reduce, reuse and recycle waste (3Rs)’
Minimisation of waste is grounded as a key element of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) by an objective within the EU’s renewed Sustainable Development Strategy (2006) aimed at ‘avoiding the generation of waste’.
One of the objectives of the 6th Environmental Action Programme (EAP) (Article 8) is to achieve ‘a significant overall reduction in the volumes of waste generated through waste prevention initiatives, better resource efficiency and a shift towards more sustainable production and consumption patterns’.
Waste prevention is one of the priorities of the Thematic Strategy on the Prevention and Recycling of Waste which emerged from the 6th EAP.
The 2008 updated Waste Framework Directive (WFD) requires that Member States establish waste prevention programmes by the end of 2013 whose objectives should be to ‘reduce the adverse impacts of waste and of the amounts of waste generated.’ (Article 29). Waste prevention is the most preferred waste management option in the waste hierarchy given in Article 4 of the WFD.
The Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe (COM(2011) 571) notes that each year in the European Union 2.7 billion tonnes of waste is generated, 98 million tonnes of which is hazardous. The Roadmap.includes the milestone that'by 2020, waste generated per capita is in absolute decline'.It calls upon Member States to ensure full implementation of the EU waste acquis including minimum targets through their national waste prevention strategies.
No quantified targets have been specified.
Figure 1: Total waste generation figures for each economic activity category as defined from national accounts (single figure NACE_R2 code industries) are downloaded from Eurostat along with some individual waste generation categories related to mineral wastes (11.3 dredging spoils; 12.1 12.2 12.3 & 12.5 mineral wastes excluding combustion wastes, contaminated soils and polluted dredging spoils; and 12.6 contaminated soils and polluted dredging spoils). For each category of economic activity the mineral waste totals as defined above are removed from total generation. Two suspicious items were removed from the data set: under NACE category 'Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply' data for Romania are excluded, being of questionable quality; under NACE category 'Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities' data for Ireland are excluded, being of questionable quality. For the graphic representation, all numbers are divided by 1000000 and presented as millions of tonnes. Subsequent total waste generation under each NACE category are stacked to produce a single bar showing total non-mineral waste generation for that year.
Figure 2: Total waste generation figures for each economic activity category as defined from national accounts (single figure NACE_R2 code industries) are downloaded from Eurostat along with some individual waste generation categories related to mineral wastes (11.3 dredging spoils; 12.1 12.2 12.3 & 12.5 mineral wastes excluding combustion wastes, contaminated soils and polluted dredging spoils; and 12.6 contaminated soils and polluted dredging spoils). For each category of economic activity the mineral waste totals as defined above are removed from total generation. Two suspicious items were removed from the data set: under NACE category 'Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply' data for Romania are excluded, being of questionable quality; under NACE category 'Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities' data for Ireland are excluded, being of questionable quality. Total waste generation minus mineral wastes for each economic activity for each year are divided by the total for the base year 2004 and multiplied by 100 to give an index. Fixed price GDP for the EU-27 was also drawn from Eurostat data and indexed to 2004 using a similar method.
No gap filling was necessary.
No methodology references available.
No uncertainty has been specified.
Data uncertainties have been identified in the case of Romania in the category ‘Electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply’ and Ireland in the category ‘Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities’. Reported amounts of waste suffer quality issues.
Member States are free to develop their own methods for collection of waste statistics. This enables Member States to keep their established data collection systems and to minimise the changes needed to comply with the Regulation. However, the multi-method approach raises serious problems. It may result in methodological differences from one country to another, between different data sets from the same country and even within individual data sets. This makes it somewhat difficult to safeguard data comparability and to ensure high data quality. An assessment of the quality of waste statistics provided by countries to Eurostat is summarised in a report to the European Council which can be found here:
A second report summarising the data quality and adjustment process between Eurostat and the countries statistical offices can be found here:
http://circa.europa.eu/Public/irc/dsis/envirmeet/library?l=/statistics_29-30/validation_20110913pdf/_EN_1.0_&a=d
The indicator does not address the hazardous waste element of the policy question.
It should be noted that the waste generation figures from all sectors when added up present some elements of double counting. Much of the waste generated by the waste management sector is secondary waste resulting from waste treatment. For example bottom ash from incinerators, or residual waste from waste sorting and recycling plants. The mass of this waste has already been recorded once in the waste generated by other sectors so such secondary waste represents double counting. From the next reporting period (reporting for the year 2010) these secondary wastes will become distinguishable from other wastes. They will remain shown in the indicator but will be clearly distinguished from other wastes so that trends in waste generation excluding secondary wastes can also be identified.
For references, please go to https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/10.1-development-in-generation-of/assessment or scan the QR code.
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