Each year, we generate 2.5 billion tonnes of waste in the European Union – or five tonnes per person. Our waste contains large volumes of valuable materials for Europe’s industry, such as paper, wood, industrial minerals, and metals. Some of these can already be recycled close to 100% with no losses in quantity and quality (such as glass and steel). Proper separate collection of waste is necessary to ensure optimal material recovery. The current trend of increasing collection rates, encouraged by EU legislation, is promising. However, progress is uneven between Members States.

Good practices have the potential to serve as examples for other territories. During three years, the COLLECTORS partners collected, analysed and disseminated local good practices on municipal waste collection that lead to high quality recycling. This work was done in collaboration with the different players of the recycling value chain citizens that sort waste, local authorities and producers responsibility organizations implementing local collection services, recyclers preparing the sorted material for their final uses, and end users of recycled
materials.