Summary

This report encompasses the findings of a project conducted by environmental authorities from Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden during 2024 and the early part of 2025. The project’s overarching aim is to improve understanding and interpretation of published data on municipal waste, drawing attention to the practical and administrative differences that can affect statistics.

The project is funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers. The project’s findings are beneficial for EU member states, Eurostat and European policy makers to gain knowledge and insights into municipal waste data and the current challenges associated with methodology and statistics. The project’s results and recommendations may contribute positively to the achievement of more accurate and comparable data on municipal waste across countries. Accurate waste data and legislation plays an essential role in facilitating a successful transition to a circular economy, thus reducing environmental impact and promoting sustainable living within our planet's boundaries. Furthermore, all EU member states are committed to the recycling targets set by the EU in the Waste Framework Directive on municipal waste. This necessitates accurate, comparable and comprehensive municipal waste data across all EU member states. The focus has been on improvements in methodology and statistics, and possible other consequences and effects have not been investigated.

The project was initiated since Denmark and Sweden’s reported amounts of municipal waste are remarkably different from each other despite the economy and consumption habits being comparable. Thus, this project aimed to discover whether and how the countries’ approaches to the common EU methodology on MW differ from each other resulting in different measurements. The project examined the practical application and management of the standard EU methodology for municipal waste across these Nordic countries, discovering considerable inconsistencies in the approach to the common methodology. The central differences in the participating countries’ approach to the EU methodology which the project group assess has a significant effect on the municipal waste statistics:

Furthermore, the report provides a set of recommendations for necessary alterations and best practices for the methodology in order to enhance the comparability of municipal waste data across EU member states. It further emphasizes the need for more precise definitions of municipal waste. The recommendations are presented in three overall categories related to methodology on municipal waste aimed at policy makers and Eurostat:

Lastly, the project group presents four shared recommendations for the best practices in the collection and measurement of municipal waste data. The phrase "best practices" is used here to refer to the most effective approach that should be pursued by fellow EU member states to ensure thorough, precise, and efficient reporting on municipal waste:

This report comprehensively presents the knowledge, competence, and findings of the project group. It should be noted, however, that the scope and validity of the results are inherently bound by the expertise and knowledge that the project group possesses.

The report is structured in a progressive manner with each chapter building upon the previous one. However, the structure also allows for individual chapters to be read independently, accommodating to the specific focus and interest of the reader regarding the project’s results. The report consists of the following four chapters:

Chapter 1 Comparison of Data Collection and Delimitation of Municipal Waste shares an overview of the countries’ statistics on generated municipal waste. Furthermore, the chapter presents the findings from the mapping in the Appendices highlighting the central differences and similarities in the countries’ reporting practices, which the project group has identified to be relevant for and affecting the MW statistics. Additionally, including an examination of selected material fractions of MW in order to explore differences in delimitation of MW across countries affecting the MW statistics

Chapter 2 Comparison of Reporting Practices of Recycled Municipal Waste presents the findings from the analysis highlighting the central differences and similarities in the countries approach to EU’s methodology on recycling of municipal waste. Furthermore, the chapter includes a comparison of how the countries’ recycling rate has been affected by the shift from the “old” EU methodology on recycling to the “new” EU methodology on recycling

Chapter 3 Shared Recommendations for the Methodology on Municipal Waste presents the project group’s shared recommendations for the methodology concerning municipal waste. These recommendations both highlight the project group’s identification of issues related to the methodology for municipal waste, suggestions for changes in the guidance and definition that could improve the methodology and statistics. Additionally, the group shares their recommendations for best practices, when applying EU methodology on municipal waste

Lastly the project group shares their conclusive remarks about the project and relevant future studies on this subject

Appendices A–D Description of each Countries’ Waste Management and Approach to EU’s methodology on Municipal Waste provides a comprehensive insight and mapping of each participating country's waste management and approach to the EU’s methodology on reporting and calculating generated and treated municipal waste. These appendices can be read independently to gain general knowledge on each country's waste management or for a deeper understanding of the individual country’s methodology than provided in the report.