Belgium has emerged as one of Europe’s leading recyclers, ranking second in the European Union for its use of recycled materials in 2024, according to new Eurostat figures released on

Wednesday. Only the Netherlands outperformed Belgium across the bloc.

Eurostat’s “circularity rate” — the share of recycled materials in overall material consumption — reached 12.2% across the EU last year. The increase, though modest at 0.1 percentage points from 2023, represents a steady rise of 4.7 points compared with 2015.

Belgium significantly outpaced the EU average, posting a circularity rate of 22.7%, up nearly one percentage point from the previous year and 4.7 points higher than a decade ago. The Netherlands led with 32.7%, having improved its performance by 5.3 points since 2015. Italy ranked third at 21.6%.

At the opposite end of the scale, Romania (1.3%), Finland (2%) and Ireland (2%) recorded the lowest rates in the EU. All three countries have seen their recycling performance deteriorate over the past decade.

Some member states, however, have made striking progress. Malta posted the largest increase, jumping 14 percentage points to 18.6%. Estonia followed with a 9.1-point rise to 20.5%, while the Czech Republic improved by 7.2 points to reach 14.8%.

Poland and Finland saw the sharpest declines, dropping 4.2 and 3.2 points respectively, with Poland falling to 7.7% and Finland to 2%.

Metal ores remained the EU’s most recycled material category in 2024, followed by non-metallic minerals, biomass and fossil-fuel-based materials.

The strong performance of countries like Belgium comes amid major new investments in recycling capacity, including a €300 million plastic recycling plant planned by Belgian-Turkish firm Synpet at the Port of Antwerp. Photo by Jamain, Wikimedia commons.