A few days ago, the results of the 2024 municipal waste management report in Catalonia were published. Although it may seem like we're making progress, the reality is stubborn: we remain stagnant. After 25 years of selective collection of organic waste and more than two decades of taxation penalizing landfills, we're barely reaching 40% actual recycling. This is a far cry from the 55% required by Europe for 2025 and even further from the 65% target for 2035.
The data speaks for itself. Selective collection reached 47.1% in 2024, just four percentage points more than in 2019, a progress that doesn't even reach a point of annual increase. This is despite the fact that 42.3% of municipalities already have highly efficient systems such as door-to-door collection or closed containers with access control. Meanwhile, waste generation per inhabitant has grown: 482 kilos per person per year, a 1% increase, which, together with the increase in population, translates into 2.5% more waste managed by Catalan municipalities than the previous year.
It's true that there are some bright spots. There remains a certain decoupling from economic growth; organic waste collection, after years of sluggishness, has rebounded, with a 6% increase, and packaging collection remains on the rise. But these improvements don't change the diagnosis. We are practically where we were: far from the recycling targets and far from the maximum 10% landfill target for 2035 (today we remain at 31.5%).
It may seem encouraging that in Catalonia, more than 10 years away, we are very close to meeting the 50% municipal separate collection obligation established by Law 7/2022 in Spain by 2035. In fact, 21 Catalan regions already exceed this figure. It's a shame that this national target lacks any mathematical rigor: optimistically, with 50% separate collection, a 40% actual recycling rate is achieved; a far cry from the European target of 65% by 2035.
Since this isn't about cheating at solitaire, let's stick with the imperative need to improve. How? Well, we're still waiting for major advances in collection in medium-sized and large cities; we're still waiting for infrastructure to replace landfills for final treatment, in a current situation close to collapse without knowing where to dump them, and we're still waiting for obligations for producers, who must come in to lighten a municipal burden that's starting to weigh too much. After all, more than 60% of household waste comes from products someone has put on the market.
Perhaps until the cost of managing and recycling the waste from a T-shirt is no more expensive than the current retail price of some of them, we will not have sent the right message to society about what the circular economy really entails.
