The escalating climate crisis has drawn attention towards garbage, as waste that goes to landfill releases harmful greenhouse gases as it decomposes, adding to global warming. Yet with many countries shipping their recyclable waste abroad, it can be difficult to know how much is really getting recycled. Using data from the latest report by Eunomia and the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) from 2017, combined with stats from the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), we reveal the 15 best and 15 worst nations for recycling.
In 15th place is Scotland, which recycles a sizeable 44.2% of its waste as of 2017. In fact, it was recently reported that the amount of household waste recycled in Scotland had overtaken the percentage sent to landfill. In Livingston, the largest recycling plant in the UK, Brewster Bros (pictured), opened in August 2018. The plant largely deals with waste from construction sites and can recycle 400,000 tonnes of construction waste per year.
Almost half of Denmark’s waste is recycled, with leftover rubbish being sent to incinerator plants, where it’s burned and used to heat homes. In October, a new incinerator opened in Copenhagen – with a difference. CopenHill (pictured), is essentially a super-clean waste-to-energy plant that can convert 440,000 tons of waste into clean energy every year. The site serves the unexpected dual purpose of being a ski slope and activity centre for the city’s residents to enjoy.
Sweden has a long-running bottle recycling scheme, which started in 1984. Swedes can drop off their empty glass and plastic bottles and cans at ‘reverse vending machines’, which give out vouchers in return. In fact, Sweden has now prohibited the sale of any bottles or cans that are not part of the scheme. Returpack, the company that runs the scheme, processed an impressive 2.05 billion bottles and cans last year. While Sweden’s recycling rate for bottles and cans is high at 84.8%, its overall recycling rate is lower, as like Denmark, much of Sweden’s waste is incinerated.
Luxembourg might be good at recycling, but it needs to be – its citizens produce the fifth-highest amount of waste of any EU country, at over 1,322lb (600kg) per person according to Eurostat. In its national waste and resources plan 2017, the government outlined key targets around recycling. Among other things, it will increase packaging recycling rates to 70% by 2022, promote the use of reusable packaging, clamp down on littering and reduce food waste.
Italy has a high recycling rate overall, yet there’s huge variation between municipalities. The city of Mantua in the north, which uses a colour coded bag system to sort trash, was called Italy’s most sustainable city after it reported 80% recycling rates in 2017. Yet in the south, it’s far less well-managed, with the amount of waste that’s recycled in the southern city of Catania as low as 9.34%. Pictured is a waste to energy plant in Brescia, northern Italy.
Switzerland has long been ahead of the curve when it comes to recycling. In the 1990s, it introduced the ‘polluter pays’ principle, where people are taxed on rubbish bags in order to incentivise recycling. The scheme was hugely effective, doubling the recycling rate in 20 years. It’s also one of the world-leading countries for glass bottle recycling, with 96% being recycled according to the European Container Glass Federation (FEVE) – well above the EU average of 73%.
Belgium is one of the leading recyclers in Europe, with the Flanders region being one of Europe’s recycling hubs. Flanders’ Materials Program, launched in 2012, helps companies to use sustainable design and state-of-the-art recycling, and won an award at the World Economic Forum in 2016. Belgium recycled almost 10 million light bulbs last year, thanks to non-profit organisation Recupel, which collects e-scrap and lightbulbs to be turned into new electronics. The company is also pioneering the use of AI for the sorting and processing of electronics, which would improve efficiency.
It may be small, with a population of just over 2 million, but Slovenia is streets ahead of many larger countries when it comes to recycling. In its capital, Ljubljana, the state-of-the-art Ljubljana Regional Waste Management Centre (RCERO) (pictured) handles more than 170,000 tonnes of rubbish each year. With the majority of waste that’s sent there getting recycled, turned into biofuel or composted, only 4.9% of waste sent to the plant ends up in landfill.
Trash is hard to find in Vienna, Austria’s super-clean capital city. The government has several initiatives – encouraging citizens to use reusable coffee cups, reduce food waste and use reusable diapers – to help people cut down on waste. Vienna is also home to three waste incineration plants, which deal with any waste that can’t be recycled. Pfaffenau, a waste-to-energy facility located six miles from the city centre, produces enough heat to warm 50,000 homes each year and enough electricity to power 25,000 homes.
The Netherlands has a few key initiatives to thank for its high recycling rates. In Amsterdam, the Wasted scheme rewards citizens that recycle plastic with tokens, which can be redeemed for discounts at local shops and businesses. Meanwhile, innovative companies are coming up with new ways to recycle. Dutch company EverUse recycles paper and turns it into insulation materials for housing. Pictured is Dutch King Willem-Alexander carrying out the official opening of the EverUse factory in Sneek, in January 2018.
Tawian has an offbeat way of encouraging people to recycle – its garbage collection trucks blast classical music to remind people to bring their bins out. But it’s clearly working. In 1993, virtually nothing was recycled and only 70% of overall trash was collected, lending it the nickname of "Garbage Island". Today, the country reports an impressive 58% recycling rate. Other initiatives that have helped include composting of raw food waste, which is turned into fertiliser, and fines for not disposing of waste correctly.
South Korea is another country that’s turned its recycling reputation around – particularly when it comes to food waste. Back in 1995, a mere 2% of food waste was recycled, while today that figure has risen to 95% according to a study published in the Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management. Since 2013, Seoul residents have been legally required to dispose of food waste in biodegradable bags. They are charged a small fee for the bags, which is intended to discourage food wastage, and the fees pay for the cost of collecting and processing the city’s waste. Pictured are food waste bins in Seoul.
Singapore’s high recycling rates owe more to informal recyclers – known as karung guni (pictured) – than they do to the government’s National Recycling Programme. The karung guni collected around 20% of all household recyclable waste in 2016, while the national recycling effort collected just 2%. These informal collectors visit households and pick up all types of recyclable waste, including electronics, which they sell on to dealers and recycling companies.
In second place is Wales, recycling an impressive 63.8% of its waste, which leaves neighbouring England lagging behind with its 42.8% recycling rate. Wales was the first UK nation to start charging for plastic bags, in 2011, resulting in a 70% drop in their use. The country’s success in increasing its recycling has been attributed to setting statutory targets, improving separate waste collection services and engaging communities to recycle.
Germany leads the way with 66.1% of its waste being recycled. It has six different bins: black for general waste, blue for paper, yellow for plastic, white for clear glass, green for coloured glass and brown for composting. This means that citizens must do the sorting themselves, which reduces the amount of money the government has to spend on sorting, as well as reducing contamination. German law makes companies responsible for making their packaging reusable or recyclable, operating under a ‘polluter pays’ principle, and all recyclable items are marked with a recognisable green dot.
Turning to the countries that are the worst at recycling, Bermuda is in 15th place according to the UNSD Municipal Waste Treatment report 2018. The report uses the most recently available statistics supplied by national statistics offices, although for some developing countries, there’s a lack of reliable data due to the recycling sector often being run informally. On this tiny 20-square-mile island, there’s minimal space for recycling facilities, so recyclable materials are sent to the US for recycling. The government has tried to improve recycling rates by installing more bins in coastal areas (pictured).
In Ecuador, the government has installed more recycling bins in recent years, in a bid to improve recycling rates. However, the bins may have had some unforeseen consequences. Informal ‘recyclers’ sort through the country’s landfills searching for recyclable materials which they can sell on, earning between $75 to $100 a week – yet their incomes have dropped since the introduction of recycling bins. The official recycling rate for the country is low because it reflects government recycling, rather than the informal sector.
The small country of Samoa, consisting of two islands in the South Pacific Ocean, faces the problem of plastic drifting in from other countries. An estimated 60% of the waste produced in Samoa is organic and 35% is potentially recyclable according to the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme. Yet recycling companies don’t have the resources to deal with it, so most of it ends up in landfill or dumped in the open. The country is considering putting a bottle return scheme in place, where customers would pay a small levy on plastic bottles, which they’d get back if they recycle it.
Botswana’s Recycling Guidelines of 2012 were supposed to lead to an upsurge in recycling, yet rates remain extremely low. In a research paper published in the journal Waste Management & Research, PhD student Daniel Mmereki wrote that, “an efficient solid waste (SW) management system in Botswana is still lacking because of the gap between the policy in place and its implementation”. The paper also highlighted the fact that a lack of reliable data on the amount of waste generated, and how it was dealt with, posed a big problem to improving waste management.
Like many countries with low recycling rates, part of the reason may be a sheer lack of reliable data. Yet with an estimated 20% of the country’s total waste ending up in illegal dump sites, it’s clear that the country is struggling to manage its waste properly, let alone send items to be recycled. Informal dump sites litter the countryside and can pollute the groundwater.
In a study of seven Palestinian districts published in the journal Waste Management, it was found that while 98% of residents had access to waste collection services, “burning in open dumpsites was the most common practice”, when it came to dealing with waste. The issue of waste has become part of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as Israel reportedly had at least 15 waste treatment facilities in the Palestinian-occupied West Bank. According to the report, published by Israeli rights group B’Tselem, the waste management facilities were being used to recycle waste largely produced in Israel.
Kazakhstan is the ninth-largest country in the world, home to more than 18 million people, yet its waste management systems are seriously under-developed. The latest UNSD figures suggest that a measly 0.3% of waste is recycled, with cities being far ahead of rural areas when it comes to recycling. In fact, Kazakhstan’s capital, Nur-Sultan (previously known as Astana), is soon to have a separate waste collection system, which should improve recycling rates. Along with this, there are plans to build a new organic waste recycling plant in the city.
Joining seven other nations with a recorded recycling rate of 0% is Ukraine. The Eastern European nation disposes of 94% of its waste in landfills, according to local media, although unauthorised garbage dumps and recent fires at landfill sites are putting pressure on the government to improve waste management. In Kyiv, the Ukranian capital, a waste incineration plant deals with around one-fifth of the city’s waste and turns it into energy, but it is the only one of its kind in the country.
In Macedonia, there is just one official landfill site, located near the capital, Skopje. While this covers the waste from one region of the country, the majority of waste from the other seven regions often ends up in temporary or informal landfill sites. In response to these issues, Macedonia’s Ministry of Finance has sought to construct six local waste management facilities, as well as central facilities for dealing with sanitary waste, mechanical biological waste, compost and waste sorting.
It might be a tourist hotspot, but Saint Lucia is drowning in waste. The Caribbean island produces the eighth-highest amount of waste per capita, according to the World Bank, although a significant amount of this comes from the tourism industry. There’s just one landfill in the country to deal with all that waste. In July this year, it was announced that the government had received a grant to set up a two-year pilot project for recycling plastic waste, which will run in select communities in Saint Lucia.
The tiny country of Monaco, with an area of just 0.78 square miles (2.02 square km), lacks the facilities to recycle its own waste. However, the government of Monaco reports that the majority of recyclable household waste is sent to Paprec Trivalo Côte d'Azur Waste Sorting Centre in Cannes-la-Bocca (pictured), in neighbouring France. According to the government website, “a total of almost 350 tonnes of household packaging from Monaco is sent annually to this plant for sorting”. This shows that issues in how recycling rates are defined may impact the low rate of small countries like Monaco.
Europe’s fourth-smallest country may fall down on recycling due to a lack of reliable data. However, the UNSD figures do indicate that just over half of Liechtenstein’s waste is composted, which means that a fair amount of waste is being disposed of sustainably. In 2016, students at the University of Liechtenstein won the first round in the Accenture Campus Innovation Challenge for their waste management project, which uses sensors in bins to transfer waste to central waste collection points.
The small island nation of Cabo Verde, located off the coast of Senegal, has tourism to blame for most of its litter problems. According to research from non-profit The Travel Foundation, hotels create around 42% of the total volume of waste sent to landfill. What’s more, rubbish from other countries washes up on the beach: in a video posted by environmental group Biosfera Cabo Verde, activists showed that waste had come from at least 25 different countries. Pictured is waste recovered from a remote sea turtle nesting area in Cabo Verde.
Azerbaijan is another country that has a big problem with litter piling up in unauthorised areas, like this rubbish dump along the Agsu Pass. Since the UNSD statistics were collected in 2015, Azerbaijan has slowed the growth of landfill in Baku, its capital, and is aiming to move away from incinerating and towards recycling its waste. A new waste sorting and incineration cluster opened in Baku in 2015, which comprises a 500,000-tonne-capacity waste-to-energy plant as well as a waste-sorting plant.
Andorra is another country that has found that it is too small to recycle its own waste. According to the Minister of Environment, Agriculture and Sustainable Development of Andorra, Silvia Calvó, speaking to All Andorra News, “there is not enough volume of waste to be treated and so it would not be profitable to build our own recycling plant”. The country sorts its waste into recyclables like paper (pictured), aluminium and plastics, and non-recyclables, before exporting its to large-scale producers to Catalonia, Spain.