Italy is among the European countries with the best performance in both preparing municipal waste and packaging waste for reuse and recycling. According to the Early Warning Report 2023, carried out by the EU Commission in collaboration with the European Environment Agency, the recycling rate of waste, both special and urban, has reached 72 percent (compared to a European average of 58 percent), with peaks of excellence for packaging: 10.5 million tons of packaging sent to material recovery in 2022 (it was 9.3 in 2018), 2 points above the 70 percent target set by the EU for 2030. To make a quantum leap in the circularity of its economy, which is very important both for the economic competitiveness of a country that is a major importer of raw materials and to reduce its climate and environmental impacts, Italy must not sit back on its positive achievements, but make further strides in waste recycling: catch up on the delays that remain in some supply chains (such as WEEE), develop new sectors (such as battery and solar panel recycling), strengthen secondary raw material markets so that primary raw material consumption is reduced, and develop some innovations in some supply chains (such as chemical recycling of plastics).
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