Unified recycling plan for Austria in 2023 and less waste due to inflation

The new regulations will lead to more recycled materials and officials plan for more in 2025 and 2030

On 1 January, new recycling rules will kick in in Austria, unifying regional practices around the country. According to a statement by Environment Minister Leonore Gewessler, this would lead to an increase in the recycling rate of plastics by around 20%.

Additionally, according to an official report by Altstoff Recycling Austria (ARA), this year households produced noticeably less waste in 2022. The ARA report attributes this to the cost of living crisis and people consuming less.

A new recycling strategy for Austria

The big change is that all plastic packaging like yoghurt pots, plastic bags, bottles, etc. can all be put in the yellow bin. This has been the case for Vienna and the Federal State of Lower Austria, but other federal states have multiple bins or even refuse to take in anything other than plastic bottles.

This is supposed to boost the recycling rate of plastics by around 20%, according to data by the ARA. According to the government’s recycling plan, from 2025 people can also throw away metal in yellow bins.

Again, this practice is commonplace in Vienna and Lower Austria, however, different states tend to approach the issue in their own ways. This would help Austria reach the EU’s recycling target of 50% by 2025 and a rate of 55% by 2030. The current recycling rate is 25%

Additionally, there are more ambitious quotas for plastic bottles in particular, with 77% by 2025 and 90% by 2030.

Less waste in 2022

According to the ARA’s end-of-year report, Austrian households have produced less trash, due to the cost of living crisis and inflation stemming from the war in Ukraine. The company reported a 3.5% drop in the collected trash.

The difference was most significant with paper packaging, newspapers and magazines, with a drop of around 6.6%. There was also a noticeable decline in print advertising, like brochures, likely due to the rise of digital advertising and the rising cost of paper. Plastics, meanwhile, fell by 2.4% and metal waste did not change.

The recovering tourism industry, on the other hand, has led to an increase in trash collection around the holidays by around 2.5%. This is an increase of around 32,000 tons compared to the lockdown year of 2021.