Spain leads amongst European neighbours in recycling tables

SPAIN saw a record-breaking year in 2015, when 1,300,399 tonnes of domestic waste was sent for salvaging, an impressive 3.3 per cent increase on 2014.

This information was released by non-commercial Spanish organisation, Ecoembes, who specialise in controlling waste removal and goods recycling.  

According to Ecoembes, a massive 74.8 per cent of domestic products in Spanish households are sent to be recycled. This percentage places Spain amongst the top recycling nations in Europe, exceeding recycling standards set as the EU norm by the European Commission, by a whopping 55 per cent, or 19 points.

Leading the salvaging table in the recycling sector were used products in metallic packaging, such as tins and cans; 83 per cent of these goods were later recycled. This is a whole eight points higher than the orienteering EU norm.

A total of 200,618 dedicated blue containers across Spain received 82.9 per cent of paper packaging and cardboard waste, and 366,339 yellow recycling containers received 63.8 per cent of the total disposed plastic, cans and cartons. This means that, on average, every single person living in Spain in 2015, threw away 12.7 kg of metallic and plastic waste into the yellow container, and 15.1 kg of paper and carton waste into the blue container.

According to statistics, the most waste especially thrown away for recycling purposes is in Navarre, with 20.2 kg salvage per capita, followed by Madrid with 19.5 per capita, and in the Basque Country, with 17.7 per capita. 

Thanks to the salvaging and recycling of this type of domestic waste in 2015, the country had managed to save expenditure on  4.6 million MW / h of electricity and 24.8 billion cubic meters of water.

The enlightening statistics were released following International Recycling Day, which took place on May 17.