Questions on waste generation in the EU

These last weeks I’ve seen the graph shown above, circulating on LinkedIn. Apparently, it’s based on data from Eurostat and presented to the EU parliament, but I couldn’t find the original source. Nevertheless, my first thought is that I would be very much surprised if this is true. How can Denmark produce twice as much waste per capita compared to its neighbours in Sweden? What’s the secret of the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Spain to reduce their waste generation in times of economic growth? And what’s going wrong in Czechia, jumping from 275 towards 575 kilogram per capita per year?

It’s hard to believe that these figures are true representations of what actually happens. I would think that answers to the questions must probably be sought in the definitions to produce these data. In international practice, municipal waste generation is the waste that is actually produced in the households and in small shops, offices and institutions that are serviced by municipal waste collection. It means that this defined waste should include all the waste in these households etc, before it is handed over to collectors or placed in street containers or brought to collection points. If this definition is not strictly used it may be the missing explainer of the graph.

Some thoughts:

• Generation-data are often actually collection-data. It’s a tough job to measure what is actually generated in the households. Using the volume of collected waste and dividing this by the number of inhabitants is much easier.
• Improved services. When countries enter the EU, it comes with some obligations, also regarding waste collection. The effect is that, when quality of waste collection services increases, more people get access to these services and the waste per capita grows.
• Law enforcement. When law enforcement becomes more stringent, people tend to use the regular waste collection services more intensively, instead of littering or burning the waste.
• Changing consumption patterns. Looking at our supermarkets over the last 20 years, we can see that our food preparation has changed from the kitchen to the food-industry. Ready-made-meals and pre-treated-vegetables-in-a-bag have resulted in a shift of waste generation from the households to the industry.
• Changing laws. The introduction of EPR systems has taken away households’ responsibility for packaging waste, spent tires, electrical appliances etc. Part of this waste is now no longer generated at the households but at the industries responsible for these EPR-schemes. That’s a positive development but it also leads to a more or less artificial reduction of waste generation at these households.
• Pay-as-you-throw. PAYT-schemes are strongly incentivising waste recycling. But do they also lead to less waste generation? Maybe a bit, but one of the important side-effects is that people also try to find “alternative” solutions. In earlier years, waste generated by minor reconstructions in houses would partly end up in garbage bins and bags. But when PAYT waste collections starts, people tend to be creative in finding other ways such as reusing bricks and concrete in foundations and using the wood in a garden fireplace.

You can probably think of many other examples that lead to the differences expressed in the chart above. The message is clear: don’t be too sure that countries can already decouple waste generation from economic growth. That’s most probably not true. Real reductions in waste generation have to come from real reductions in our consumption and nothing else.