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Waste statistics

1999/0010(COD)

The Commission presented its third report on statistics compiled pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 2150/2002 on waste statistics and their quality.

The first report was published in 2008 and the second in 2011.

This report considers the results of the latest data delivery in June 2012 for reference year 2010 and covers 27 EU Member States. It also describes the implementation of the revised annexes to the Waste Statistics Regulation, applicable for reference year 2010.

Since the first data delivery in 2006, Eurostat has set up an efficient two-step quality control system.

  • The first step is a quick evaluation of data and quality reports. It sends an evaluation report within two months of the reporting deadline.
  • The second step is a more in-depth validation with no strict deadline. This analyses the data at a more detailed level (e.g. by economic sector and by waste category) and compares patterns and developments across countries. Potential questions are checked against the countries’ quality reports and the feedback to the quick evaluation. This may result in a second set of questions being sent to the countries concerned.

The report notes that significant progress has been achieved with regard to the compilation of waste statistics since reporting started in 2006:

  • the completeness of data delivery by Member States has steadily improved;
  • waste statistics have reached a fairly high degree of comparability across countries for most waste categories and sectors and considerable progress is being made towards full data coverage;
  • overall, the data are of appropriate quality for most countries. However, in order to help achieving EU environment, industrial and raw materials policy objectives,
  • further improvement is needed;
  • the harmonisation of data is furthered by a set of methodological guidance documents thatare available from the website of the Environmental Data Centre on Waste and by workshops addressing areas in which there are serious differences in data coverage (for example, workshops were held on mining waste in October 2011 and on construction and demolition waste in October 2012);
  • errors and methodological deficits are identified by the quality control system.

As a new approach to improving data quality, Eurostat is setting up a programme that aims to support countries in which there are serious shortcomings by means of bilateral meetings to enable discussion of such issues, and options for improvement.

With the extension of the time series, the data is becoming increasingly useful, e.g. for building indicators and for use in the field of Environmental Accounts.

Also, the effect of new concepts introduced by the revised Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC), i.e. end-of-waste criteria, on waste statistics will have to be monitored.

The report highlights that:

  • indicators on ‘generation of waste excluding major mineral wastes’ (tsdpc210) and on ‘generation of hazardous waste, by economic activity’ (tsdpc250) are established and are both part of the set of Sustainable Development Indicators;
  • a new indicator on ‘landfilling of waste excluding major mineral wastes’ has been developed and the plan is to include it in the set of Resource Efficiency Indicators;
  • the development of indicators on other treatment categories, including recycling, is ongoing.