Digging the topic - part 2

How much waste do we produce?

Once described the typology of waste that we produce (have a look at previous post if you have not done yet), I would like to take into account some data about the waste production to better frame the topic.

If we consider the waste production on a European scale first, the European Commission website shows that, in 2010, 2.5 billion tons of rubbish have been produced in the EU-27 area. Figure 1 shows all kind of waste generated but, for the aim of this blog, I will focus mainly on the light green sector of the pie chart: this is the 37% of the total, that is 927 million tons, something like 1847 kg for each inhabitant. Why is this the main data of the pie chart? Because the MSW is included within this sector. As we can see, the recyclable waste covers the 10% of the total amount, which corresponds to 255 million tons of materials.

Figure 1: European waste production in 2010 according to the European Commission web site.
Within the 37%, the recyclable percentage is pointed out: 10% of the total, 255 million tons of the total. (click to enlarge).

If you want to go more into detail about the quantitative aspect of the waste production, the Main Table links of the European Commission website show several interactive tables, graphs and maps that can give a wider understanding about all the types of waste generation, treatment and classification. Here I show the map of the European recyclable waste production: in 2012 the countries that produced the biggest amount of recyclable products have been United Kingdom, France and Germany while the eastern part of Europe shows the lowest ratios (note that this is not the quantity of waste that has been recycled, but it is just the production of potentially recyclable material).

Focusing on the UK situation, the Defra report mentioned in "Digging the topic - part 1" says that an average of 430 million tons of waste is produced every year in Great Britain. MSW is 7% of this total, corresponding to 29 million tons. Comparing the UK value with the European data, we can assess that Great Britain produces around 1/9 of the European recyclable waste.
Similar quantity can be found in the recent Defra report "UK statistic of Waste 2010 - 2012". In 2012, UK produced 26.4 million tons of recyclable waste. Going on an even smaller-scale, I only consider England now: the UK Government web site and the report included on it "The role of waste prevention in moving to a more resources efficient economy" assess that 177 million tons of waste have been produced in 2010. Contrasting this data with the values explained in the "UK statistic of Waste 2010 - 2012" report mentioned before, we can notice that, of a total of 177 million tons of waste production, 22.15 million tons are MSW produced by England alone. More clearly, MSW of England is about 1/8 of the total amount of waste produced.

In sum: I showed here some data regarding the amount of waste production. I started with a European overview, then zooming on UK and finally on England only: in 2010, Europe produced 2.5 billion tons of waste of which 255 are recyclable. In the same year, UK produced 29 million tons of recyclable materials. Of this, nearly all the amount was produced in England (22.15 million tons).

The question now is: how should we behave with all this quantity of rubbish? Where do we place it? "Digging the topic - part 3" will be dealing with these questions.

See you soon on RE-cycling!