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Data

Municipal waste recycling rate

About this data

Source
OECD (2018) – processed by Our World in Data
Last updated
March 16, 2018
Date range
1990–2015
Unit
Percentage

Sources and processing

This data is based on the following sources

OECD – Environment - Municipal waste, Generation and Treatment

Contact person/organisation ENV.Stat@oecd.org

Data source(s) used This dataset shows data provided by Member countries' authorities through the questionnaire on the state of the environment (OECD/Eurostat). They were updated or revised on the basis of data from other national and international sources available to the OECD Secretariat, and on the basis of comments received from national Delegates. Selected updates were also done in the context of the OECD Environmental Performance Reviews. The data are harmonised through the work of the OECD Working Party on Environmental Information (WPEI) and benefit from continued data quality efforts in OECD member countries, the OECD itself and other international organisations. In many countries systematic collection of environmental data has a short history; sources are typically spread across a range of agencies and levels of government, and information is often collected for other purposes. When interpreting these data, one should keep in mind that definitions and measurement methods vary among countries, and that inter-country comparisons require careful interpretation. One should also note that data presented here refer to national level and may conceal major subnational differences.

Key statistical concept This dataset presents trends in amounts of municipal (including household waste), and the treatment and disposal method used. The amount of waste generated in each country is related to the rate of urbanisation, the types and pattern of consumption, household revenue and lifestyles.

Metadata http://stats.oecd.org/wbos/fileview2.aspx?IDFile=9bc27df8-1205-468c-b178-ce0d200f2641

Retrieved on
March 16, 2018
Retrieved from
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=MUNW
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
OECD.Stat (2018). Environment - Municipal waste, Generation and Treatment.

Contact person/organisation ENV.Stat@oecd.org

Data source(s) used This dataset shows data provided by Member countries' authorities through the questionnaire on the state of the environment (OECD/Eurostat). They were updated or revised on the basis of data from other national and international sources available to the OECD Secretariat, and on the basis of comments received from national Delegates. Selected updates were also done in the context of the OECD Environmental Performance Reviews. The data are harmonised through the work of the OECD Working Party on Environmental Information (WPEI) and benefit from continued data quality efforts in OECD member countries, the OECD itself and other international organisations. In many countries systematic collection of environmental data has a short history; sources are typically spread across a range of agencies and levels of government, and information is often collected for other purposes. When interpreting these data, one should keep in mind that definitions and measurement methods vary among countries, and that inter-country comparisons require careful interpretation. One should also note that data presented here refer to national level and may conceal major subnational differences.

Key statistical concept This dataset presents trends in amounts of municipal (including household waste), and the treatment and disposal method used. The amount of waste generated in each country is related to the rate of urbanisation, the types and pattern of consumption, household revenue and lifestyles.

Metadata http://stats.oecd.org/wbos/fileview2.aspx?IDFile=9bc27df8-1205-468c-b178-ce0d200f2641

Retrieved on
March 16, 2018
Retrieved from
https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=MUNW
Citation
This is the citation of the original data obtained from the source, prior to any processing or adaptation by Our World in Data. To cite data downloaded from this page, please use the suggested citation given in Reuse This Work below.
OECD.Stat (2018). Environment - Municipal waste, Generation and Treatment.

How we process data at Our World in Data

All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.

At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.

Read about our data pipeline

Reuse this work

  • All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
  • All data, visualizations, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

Citations

How to cite this page

To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:

“Data Page: Municipal waste recycling rate”. Our World in Data (2026). Data adapted from OECD. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/municipal-waste-recycling-rate.html [online resource] (archived on May 11, 2026).

How to cite this data

In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:

OECD (2018) – processed by Our World in Data

Full citation

OECD (2018) – processed by Our World in Data. “Municipal waste recycling rate” [dataset]. OECD, “Environment - Municipal waste, Generation and Treatment” [original data]. Retrieved May 13, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260511-092124/grapher/municipal-waste-recycling-rate.html (archived on May 11, 2026).

Download

Quick download

Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.

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Data API

Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.

Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/municipal-waste-recycling-rate.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false
Metadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/municipal-waste-recycling-rate.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false

Code examples

Examples of how to load this data into different data analysis tools.

Excel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/municipal-waste-recycling-rate.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests

# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/municipal-waste-recycling-rate.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})

# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/municipal-waste-recycling-rate.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()
R
library(jsonlite)

# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/municipal-waste-recycling-rate.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")

# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/municipal-waste-recycling-rate.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/municipal-waste-recycling-rate.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear