Definition: municipal waste is waste collected by municipal collection services, container parks, street sweepers, etc., excluding construction materials. This municipal waste represents about 10% of the total waste production. The indicator is expressed in kilograms per capita. Statistics Belgium organises this data collection in Belgium and makes the results available, in particular to Eurostat. The data used here come from Eurostat, which publishes detailed and comparable results between EU Member States.

Goal: municipal waste must decrease.

The Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the UN (SDGs) include target 12.5: “By 2030, substantially reduce waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse.”

International comparison: the amount of municipal waste produced per capita follows a similar trend in Belgium and in the EU27, but the amount produced in Belgium is below the European average. When Member States are divided into three groups, Belgium is part of the group with the best performance in 2019. In that year, Romania ranked first with 280 kg/inhabitant and Denmark last with 844 kg/inhabitant.

UN Indicator: the selected indicator is related to indicator 12.5.1 - National recycling rate, tons of material recycled. The total waste per capita indicator is a complement to the recycling indicator.

Sources

• SDGs, Sustainable Development Goals: United Nations (2015), Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 25 September 2015, document A/RES/70/1.

• Indicators: United Nations (2017), Work of the Statistical Commission pertaining to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Resolution adopted by the General Assembly on 6 July 2017, document A/RES/71/313.

• UN Sustainable Development: https://sdgs.un.org/ (consulted on 18/01/2023).

• UN Sustainable Development Goal indicators website: https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/ (consulted on 18/01/2023).

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