Explore municipal solid waste across the 48 countries and economies included in this Europe explorer using the World Bank’s What a Waste 3.0 country dataset. Filter by country or income group, compare waste composition and treatment, inspect collection measures, and follow harmonised projections from 2022 to 2050.
Geographic scope: this explorer uses UN M49 geographic Europe as its foundation, reconciled to the country and economy rows available in WAW3. Kosovo is included because WAW3 reports it separately, while the WAW3 Channel Islands aggregate is used where Guernsey and Jersey are not separate country rows. Countries assigned to Asia in UN M49 remain in the Asia explorer, avoiding regional double-counting.
Explore municipal solid waste across the countries and economies included in this Europe explorer using World Bank What a Waste 3.0 data. Compare countries and income groups, inspect waste composition and treatment, and follow harmonised projections to 2050.
2022 is the common harmonised baseline. Reported/source observations may come from different years and are labelled separately.
2022 waste snapshot
WAW3 harmonised baselineWaste composition
Waste treatment and disposal
Collection coverage
WAW3 reports collection using different denominators: households, population, and waste mass. This explorer keeps those measures separate rather than collapsing them into one “collection rate”.
Waste generation to 2050
WAW3 projectionsMSW per-capita ranking
kg/person/day
View as table
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Methodology & sources
Show methodology
Source: World Bank What a Waste 3.0 country dataset (2026), licensed CC BY 4.0.
Percentages: The World Bank workbook stores percentage fields as fractions from 0–1. The plugin normalises them to 0–100 for display.
Missing observations: Missing composition, collection, and treatment values remain missing. They are not imputed.
Regional/income profiles: Aggregate composition and treatment profiles are weighted using 2022 municipal-waste generation for countries where each component is reported, then normalised for chart readability. Coverage is shown alongside the chart.
Projections: 2022 is the World Bank harmonised baseline; 2030, 2040, and 2050 values are projections and are not presented as reported observations.
What Europe’s waste data shows
Across the countries and economies included in this explorer, the World Bank’s harmonised 2022 baseline is about 345.5 million tonnes of municipal solid waste per year. By 2050, WAW3 projects roughly 374.8 million tonnes — an increase of about 8.5%.
The population-weighted regional average rises from about 1.265 kg per person per day in 2022 to 1.458 kg per person per day in 2050. Europe therefore shows a relatively modest rise in total municipal waste compared with the Americas, while per-capita generation still trends upward.
WAW3 provides reported generation data for all 48 included countries and economies, at least one waste-composition measure for 39, at least one collection measure for 23, and at least one treatment or disposal measure for 47. Missing values remain explicit rather than being estimated. Collection measures are kept separate by denominator — households, population or waste mass, and total, urban or rural coverage where available — rather than being collapsed into one generic collection rate.
The explorer distinguishes source-reported observations from the harmonised 2022 baseline and the 2030, 2040 and 2050 projections. Use the “About this number” controls to inspect source dates, measurement basis and provenance where WAW3 provides them.
Explore waste data by region
All six regional explorers use the same WAW3-based Unsustainable Data Explorers platform, distinguishing source-reported observations from the harmonised 2022 baseline and future projections.