Press Release: Statistics on the Collection and Treatment of Waste. Year 2022.

Main results

Waste treatment companies collected 23.0 million tonnes of urban waste, 0.8% more than in 2021.
Separate collection increased by 2.0% to 5.2 million tonnes.
In 2022, 482.0 kilograms of urban waste per capita were collected, 0.2% less than in the previous year.

More information

Companies in charge of handling urban waste collected 23.0 million tonnes of waste in 2022, 0.8% less than in the previous year. Of this, 17.8 million of tonnes was mixed waste and 5.2 million was separate collection waste.

Urban waste collection

Millions of tonnes

In per capita terms, in Spain 482.0 kilograms of waste were collected per person per year, 0.2% less than in 2021.

Per capita urban waste collection

Kilograms per inhabitant

Of this, 374 kilograms per person per year was mixed waste and 108 kilograms was separate collection. By type of waste collected separately, 31.3 kilograms per person and year of Paper and cardboard, 30.7 kilograms of Animal and plant waste, and 19.6 kilograms of Glass were collected.

Animal and plant waste collected separately increased by 2.3% in 2022, Containers and Glass by 6.3%, whereas Paper and Cardboard decreased by 0.7%.

Urban waste collection by waste type. Year 2022

Thousands of tonnes

Results by Autonomous Communities

In 2022, the Autonomous Communities that collected the most urban waste were Andalucía (4.8 million tonnes), Cataluña (3.5 million) and Comunidad de Madrid (2.8 million).

By type, Cataluña was the community where the largest quantity of Paper and cardboard (394.1 thousand tonnes), Mixed Packaging (201.71 thousand) and Glass (199.8 thousand) was collected.

Urban waste collection by Autonomous Community. Year 2022

Thousands of tonnes

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Urban waste collection by waste type and Autonomous Community Year 2022.

Thousands of tonnes

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In per capita terms, Illes Balears collected the largest amount of waste per person (662.1 kilograms) in 2022.

In contrast, the lowest figure (403.7 kilograms) was collected in La Rioja.

Urban waste collection by Autonomous Community. Year 2022

Kilograms per inhabitant

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Data revisions and updates

The data published today is provisional and will be revised when next year's data is released. All results of this operation are available on INEBase.

Methodological note

The main objective of the Statistics on Waste Collection and Treatment is to quantify in physical units the urban waste collected and the final treatment, both of urban and non-urban waste, by treatment operation. Thus, from the total quantities treated for each category of waste, it is possible to work out which quantity refers to each of the treatment operations considered.

The data in this press release refer to the management of urban waste.

The collection of urban waste includes domestic waste and commercial or industrial waste which comes under municipal jurisdiction, collected in urban containers, at clean points, or other municipal collection systems. It also includes waste from street cleaning and biodegradable waste from cleaning parks and gardens.

The population figures used are those of the resident population published by the INE on 1 July 2022.

More information on the methodology and the standardised methodological report.

INE statistics are produced in accordance with the Code of Good Practice for European Statistics. More information on Quality at INE and the Code of Best Practices.