When talking about environmental targets, it is common to place two indicators on the same level that, in reality, legislation considers different and complementary: the percentage of separate waste collection and the percentage of waste that is actually sent for recovery or recycling.
Understanding the difference is not a technical detail. It is a fundamental step for municipalities, operators and citizens, because it shows where we really stand on the path toward the circular economy.
In recent years, Italy has made significant progress in separate waste collection. National and local policies have encouraged territories to separate more waste at source, and today the national average has exceeded 65%, with many areas going even beyond this threshold.
This is an important result, showing how the system has evolved and how citizens and administrations have changed their habits.
But stopping at this figure risks providing an incomplete picture.
In the same years, the European legislator has shifted the focus to a more advanced indicator: how much of what we collect separately actually becomes new material.
Circular economy directives set progressive recycling targets for municipal waste:
- 55% by 2025
- 60% by 2030
- 65% by 2035
Here, the measure is no longer “how much we separate,” but how much we truly recover, net of treatment losses.
And it is precisely here that the complexity of the system emerges.
Today in Italy, the percentage of municipal waste actually sent to recycling is around 50%, still far from the most ambitious European targets. This means that a significant share of separately collected materials fails to close the loop.
The reasons are well known:
- low-quality fractions
- sorting errors
- contaminated materials
- high rejection rates at treatment plants
It is therefore possible to achieve very good figures in separate collection while still struggling to meet real recovery targets.
For this reason, the real challenge today is not simply to collect more, but to collect better.
This means working on the quality of fractions, reducing errors, designing measurable and controllable services, and relying on reliable data to manage the system.
Separate collection remains an essential tool.
But the final objective, increasingly clear in European and national policies, is another: truly turning waste into resources.
It is in this transition—from quantity to quality, from collection to recovery—that the challenge of the circular economy in local territories is being played out today.