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E2: Environmental statistics and accounts; sustainable development

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e-mail contact: ESTAT-CIRCULAR-ECONOMY@ec.europa.eu

The indicator is part of the Circular Economy Indicator set. It is used to monitor progress towards a circular economy on the thematic area of 'Production and consumption'.

One of the central pillars of a circular economy is feeding material back into the economy and avoiding waste being sent to landfill or incinerated, thereby capturing the value of materials as far as possible and reducing losses.

Waste management plays a central role in the circular economy. Packaging waste is a waste streams which is affected by consumers' behaviour and producers production and distribution patterns.

The CEAP 2020 announced the objective of reducing (over)packaging and packaging waste, including by setting targets and other waste prevention measures. 

'Packaging' in this context means all products made of any materials of any nature to be used for the containment, protection, handling, delivery and presentation of goods, from raw materials to processed goods, from the producer to the user or the consumer. 'Non-returnable' items used for the same purposes shall also be considered to constitute packaging. 'Packaging waste' means any packaging or packaging material covered by the definition of waste in the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC, excluding production residues (Art.3(1): ‘waste’ means any substance or object which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard).

Kilograms per capita.

Calendar year.

Indicator is produced according to the high-level quality standards of European Statistics. Details on accuracy can be found in the metadata of the source datasets (see link in “Related metadata”).

Ministries of Environment

Data source: Ministries of Environment

Data provider: Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat) based on data reported by the countries. Packaging waste by waste operations (env_waspac)

Every year

Indicator is updated annually.

T+2 years

New data points are disseminated within two years after the reference year.

All EU MS

Data are presented for all EU Member States, plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The United Kingdom until 2018 (included) and North Ireland from 2019.

The EU aggregate is also available.

All EU MS

Data are comparable between all EU Member States.

> 10 years

Presented time series starts in 2000.

> 4 data points

Length of comparable time series without methodological break is longer than 4 data points.

Analysis of indicator is presented in Commission Staff Working Document.

Eurostat, Statistics explained: Packaging waste statistics

See table cei_pc040

Eurostat dedicated section on Circular Economy.

Eurostat dedicated section on Waste.

DG ENV: EU Circular Economy Action Plan

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