Circular Economy

Material Flows in Austria in the year 2021

Circular economy is a central pillar of the European Green Deal. It aims to „maintain the value of products, materials and resources for as long as possible by returning them into the product cycle at the end of their use, while minimizing the generation of waste.“ The Federal Ministry of Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology has developed a national strategy to promote the circular economy, which was adopted by the Council of Ministers in December 2022.

The Sankey diagram shown here displays the material flows through the Austrian Economy along the four main material categories – biomass, metals, non-metallic minerals and fossil energy carriers.

This diagram builds the foundation for calculating the “circular material use rate” which is one of the indicators of the monitoring framework of the circular economy action plan of the European Commission. Further, it is suggested as a headline indicator for the monitoring framework of the 8th Environmental Action Program of the European Commission.

According to the “circular material use rate” calculated on the basis of the Sankey diagram, recycling in the Austrian economy in 2021 accounted for 9.5% of total materials used (domestic material consumption + recycling incl. import and export of waste). Further explanations and methodological notes can be found in the project report on Material Flow Accounts.

Currently data on waste treatment are from the year 2020 and will be revised when data for 2021 are available.

For further information, see the German version.

About this project

This project was implemented at Statistics Austria and co-funded by the European Union.