Julia Grosman DAI 523 Info Design 1 Pino Trogu Fall 2012 Source: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu

EUROPEAN PACKAGINGWASTE FACTSThe environmental impacts caused by the generation and treatment of waste are raising serious concerns. As wast generation also represents an inefficient use of valuable resources; although

the magnitude of the different waste streams varies across European countries, it is possible to identify waste streams that require specific consideration—such as packaging waste.

Packaging waste categories for six years period (percentages)

Germany (DE)

81.6 MFrance (FR)

63 M

United Kingdom (UK)

62.2 MItaly (IT)

60.5 MSpain (ES)

47.1 M

Hungary (HU)

10 MSweden (SE)

9.4 MAustria (AT)

8.4 MFinland (FI)

5.4 MMalta (MT)

0.4 M

Pop

ulat

ion

(In 1

,000

,000

peo

ple)

Pack

agin

g G

ener

ated

Was

te P

er P

erso

n (In

MIll

ion

Tons

)

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

15.5

31.6

47.7

63.8

78.8

94.8

–5.1

Percentage changefrom previous year

–3.1

–4.0

–5.5

–3.7

–6.8

–5.0–3.8

–8.5

–2.4

2005

Malta generates enough packaging materials to wrap the islands more than one time

SE

FI

UKDE

FR

IT

ES

ATHU

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0

20%

10%

30%

40%

Despite the fact that countries like Hungary, Sweden, Austria, and Finland are four times smaller than first five represented countries, their discards rates are much lower.

Packaging is defined as any material which is used to contain, protect, handle, deliver and present goods. Packaging waste can arise from a wide range of sources including supermarkets, retail outlets, manufacturing industries, households, hotels, hospitals, restaurants and transport companies. Items like glass bottles, plastic containers, alu-minium cans, food wrappers, timber pallets and drums are all classified as packaging. In contrast to other waste statistics, the term “packaging waste generated” means not the amount of “packaging collected,”but rather all “packaging placed on the market.”

Bubbles below the solid line represent population per country. One can see the relative sizes of bubbles and understand the population size relatively to other countries.

Bubbles above the solid line

illustrate a generated waste from packaging

per person.

Each bubble reflects one year. When stacked upon each other, one can see the cumulative effect of the garbage and also compare the overall discards production.

In 2009, the European economy was in the midst of the deepest recession since the 1930s, with real GDP projected to shrink by some 4%. This was the sharpest contraction in the history of the European Union. The average packaging generated waste percentage fell by 4.79, reflecting the economical crisis. In other words, less packaging was generated in 2009 across the Europe, which on one hand was relieving for environment, but on the other was hurting the economical development. Although signs of improvement have appeared recently, recovery remains uncertain and fragile.

Circles on the map reflect the area, in square kilometers, which can be covered with generated packaging materials over six years (2005—2010). The most interesting detail is the ration between the main graph on the left side and this map. Despite the fact that Germany generates a lot more packaging materials per person than Malta, the country has capacity to take care if the problem. Whereas Malta's rate for generated packaging is enormous the compared with the size of the country.

Bottom bar graphs break down the packaging waste to eight categories in six years period: 2005—2010. This case illustrates that the most used resource in packag-ing is paper and cardboard. Glass and plastic catego-ries' rates are almost similar in many cases.

On average every citizen in the 27 Member States EU-27 generated 164 kg of packaging waste in 2008. This quantity varied between 40 kg and 233 kg per capita across European countries. Bar graphs below show that paper and cardboard, glass, plastics, wood, and metals are, in that order, the most common types of packaging waste in European countries.

DE FR UK IT ES HU SE AT FI MT

1,000

500

100

What is packaging?

On average, an adult European citizen generates about a pound, or half a kilogram, of packaging waste per day.

During the economy recession packaging waste generation, as well as GDP, shrunk about 4%.

About 95 million tons of packaging materials were generated between 2005 and 2010 in Germany.

* Limited aluminum and steel statistics for Hungary.No aluminum or steel statistics for Spain, Austria, Finland, and Malta.