Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union

E2: Environmental statistics and accounts; sustainable development

e-mail contact : ESTAT-SDI-EU2020-INDICATORS@ec.europa.eu

The indicator is part of the EU Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicator set. It is used to monitor progress towards SDG 12 on ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns.

SDG 12, among other things, calls for the adoption of sustainable practices by businesses and environmentally-aware lifestyles of consumers. SDG 12 also envisions sustainable consumption and production, which uses resources efficiently and reduces waste.

Indicator can be considered as part of global SDG indicator 11.6.1 "Proportion of urban solid waste regularly collected and with adequate final discharge out of total urban solid waste generated, by cities".

Building on existing EU policies and legislation, the Circular Economy Package establishes a programme of action with measures covering the whole cycle from production and consumption to waste management. The Package includes commitments on ecodesign, waste prevention and reuse, clean material cycles and ambitious quantitative targets on increasing recycling and reducing landfilling, obligations to improve the separate collection of waste, as well as the promotion of efficient use of bio-based resources.

The Sustainable Consumption and Production and Sustainable Industrial Policy (SCP/SIP) Action Plan includes a series of proposals on sustainable consumption and production that will contribute to improving the environmental performance of products and increase the demand for more sustainable goods and production technologies.

The circular material use rate (CMU) measures the share of material recovered and fed back into the economy in overall material use. The CMU is defined as the ratio of the circular use of materials to the overall material use.

The overall material use is measured by summing up the aggregate domestic material consumption (DMC) and the circular use of materials. DMC is defined in economy-wide material flow accounts. The circular use of materials is approximated by the amount of waste recycled in domestic recovery plants minus imported waste destined for recovery plus exported waste destined for recovery abroad.

A higher CMU rate value means that more secondary materials substitute for primary raw materials thus reducing the environmental impacts of extracting primary material.

% of total material use

Calendar year.

The 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 to related metadata).

ESS

Data source: European Statistical System (ESS)

Data provider: Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, based on data reported by the countries.

Every 2 years

Indicator is updated every second year.

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 the United Kingdom.

All EU MS

Data are comparable between all EU Member States respectively other presented countries.

> 10 years

Presented time series (including EU aggregates) starts in 2004.

> 4 data points

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

Analysis of indicator is presented in Eurostat's annual monitoring report on Sustainable development in the EU (progress towards SDGs in the EU context).

see table  sdg_12_41

Eurostat dedicated section on SDGs: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/sdi/overview

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