; "RECYCLING")
In 2024 Italy reached a recycled-materials use rate of 21.6%, almost double the EU average. Europe’s progress is nearly flat, putting the goal of doubling circularity by 2030 at risk: more than half of Member States fail to exceed the 10% threshold
Italy’s circular economy is advancing faster than the European average—at least when it comes to the use of recycled materials, which in 2024 accounted for 21.6% of all resources consumed by the country’s industrial and manufacturing sectors. This circularity rate, reported by Eurostat in its most recent “circular materials use rate” assessment, is nearly ten percentage points higher than the EU average of 12.2%. Only the Netherlands (32.7%) and Belgium (22.7%) performed better.
Driven by traditionally circular industrial sectors such as paper and steel—where the use of recycled inputs is structurally embedded in production processes to compensate for domestic raw material shortages—Italy has increased its circularity rate from 15.7% in 2014 to 21.6% in 2023. Over the same period, the EU as a whole grew by just 1.1 percentage points, with a mere 0.1-point increase year-on-year—essentially a standstill.
At the current pace, the EU appears on track to miss the Circular Economy Action Plan’s target of doubling the bloc’s circularity rate by 2030—from 11.2% to 22.4%. While the Netherlands and Belgium have already surpassed that threshold, and Italy is on a promising trajectory, more than half of Member States remain stuck below 10%, with Portugal (3.0%), Finland and Ireland (2.0%), and Romania (1.3%) closing the ranking.
Warning signs are emerging for Italy as well: in 2024 the national circularity rate grew by just half the average increase recorded in the previous two years (+0.9% in both 2022 and 2023). Rather than accelerating, Italy is slowing down—reflecting, in circularity terms, the broader decline in industrial and manufacturing productivity. Looking back at the EU-wide data, Eurostat reports that in 2024 the bloc’s highest circularity rates were recorded for metallic minerals (23.4%, -1.2 compared to 2023), followed by non-metallic minerals (14.3%, -0.1%), biomass (9.9%, +0.2%), and fossil-based materials or energy carriers—including plastics—at 3.8% (+0.4%).
