Recycled, Recovered with Waste to Energy or landfilled? : ESWET Responds to Eurostat Findings on Municipal Waste Treatment in EU
Following the publication of the latest figures from Eurostat, trade association, European Suppliers of Waste-to-Energy Technolgy (ESWET) welomed the increasing shares of recycling and waste to energy and lower shares for landfilling, but said that there is still room for improvement.
According to the organisation, the trends are clear - municipal waste is increasingly diverted from landfilling to recycling and waste-to-energy.
With further efforts, EU Member States will get closer to reaching their recycling target of 65% by 2030 and to limit the share of landfilling to a maximum of 10% of treated municipal waste.
ESWET also noted that positive trends through these efforts are especially noticeable in countries such as Estonia, Lithuania and Finland, where increasing recycling capacity and landfill diversion called for the creation of new waste-to-energy capacity to absorb the residual waste from recycling operations and landfill closures.
Data also confirms the tendency that countries with high recycling and waste-to-energy rate are also the ones with a greater awareness of environmental protection.
However, the organisation said that huge improvement is still possible and needed in Europe. Countries such as Bulgaria, Cyprus, Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Malta, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain are still sending more than 40% of their municipal waste to landfill.
ESWET concluded that: “In order to provide a cleaner and healthier environment for future generations, it is time to further improve the way municipal waste is treated and definitely relegate landfills to history books.”
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