Waste recycling (i62)
- 31/10/2025
- objective
- assessment assessment
In 2020, 54% of municipal waste was recycled in Belgium (households only). To achieve the sustainable development goal by 2030, this figure must increase. Between 2000 and 2020, the trend is undetermined (assessment of November 2025).
Waste recycling - Belgium and international comparison
percentage of municipal waste
| 1995 | 2000 | 2005 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2020//1995 | 2020//2015 | 2023//2020 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Belgium | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | 51.0 | 54.6 | 53.3 | 53.6 | -- | -- | 1.6 |
| Belgium (only households) | 19.1 | 49.7 | 55.6 | 54.8 | 53.4 | 54.3 | -- | -- | -- | 4.3 | 0.3 | -- |
| EU27 (only households) | 18.6 | 27.3 | 32.4 | 38.0 | 45.0 | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- | -- |
| //: Average Growth Rates | ||||||||||||
Source: Statbel; Eurostat (2025), Municipal waste by waste operations, env_wasmun, https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat, last update of data 13/02/2025 23:00 (consulted on 01/07/2025).
Waste recycling by region - Belgium
percentage of municipal waste
| 1995 | 2000 | 2005 | 2010 | 2015 | 2020 | 2020//1995 | 2020//2015 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brussels-Capital Region (only households) | 3.7 | 13.6 | 18.3 | 26.1 | 39.9 | 39.0 | 9.9 | -0.4 |
| Flemish Region (only households) | 26.2 | 60.1 | 63.7 | 64.7 | 61.5 | 62.3 | 3.5 | 0.3 |
| Walloon Region (only households) | 11.9 | 42.1 | 53.6 | 43.7 | 42.8 | 43.6 | 5.3 | 0.4 |
| //: Average Growth Rates | ||||||||
Source: Statbel (2025), Direct communication, 16/09/2025.
Definition: the share of municipal waste recycled and composted/fermented. This indicator must be put in parallel with the indicator on municipal waste collection. Municipal waste is household waste collected by municipal collection services, container parks, street sweepers, etc., but does not include construction materials. This waste can be treated in four ways: landfilling, incineration (with or without energy recovery), recycling and composting/fermentation. From 2020, similar waste from sources such as commerce, offices and public institutions are included in this indicator. This change has been applied from 2020 in Belgium, but has not yet been implemented in all European countries. For this reason, two time series are presented, depending on the definition used. Statistics Belgium organises this data collection in Belgium and makes the results available, in particular to Eurostat. The data used here for the FPB calculations come from Eurostat, which publishes detailed and comparable results between EU Member States.
The following breakdown is available for this indicator: region.
Goal: recycling of waste must increase.
The Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs adopted by the UN in 2015 include target 12.5: “By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse.”
UN Indicator: the selected indicator is related to indicator 12.5.1 - National recycling rate, tons of material recycled.
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