Panel 1
Cristina Frizza
The circular material use rate measures the share of material resources reused by an economy. In the period 2004–2022, Italy's circular material use rate increased from 5.8% to 18.7%.
The circular material use rate (Circular Material Use Rate – CMUR in English) measures the contribution of reused materials (R) relative to total material use (T) across the entire economy and by resource category (biomass, metal ores, non-metallic minerals, fossil fuels). The indicator thus represents the percentage of secondary raw materials used in production processes. This indicator was developed by Eurostat and published, starting in January 2018, within the Monitoring Framework of the European Commission's Communication 'Closing the loop - An EU action plan for the Circular Economy', COM(2015) 614 final, followed by Communication COM(2020) 98 final of March 2020 'A new Circular Economy Action Plan - For a cleaner and more competitive Europe'.
The purpose is to measure the contribution of recycled materials relative to the total demand for materials. A higher CMUR indicates that a greater amount of secondary raw materials replaces extracted or imported materials, and the indicator also emphasizes, as it is structured, the effort an economy puts into collecting materials intended for recovery.
Communication COM(2020) 98 final of March 11, 2020, 'A new Circular Economy Action Plan - For a cleaner and more competitive Europe'. The COM(2020) 98 Communication aims to "double the percentage of circular material use in the next decade.
Panel 2
Circular material use rate — Calculation method — 2018 edition. Eurostat, Luxembourg (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-manuals-and-guidelines/-/KS-GQ-18-013?inheritRedirect=true&redirect=%2Feurostat%2Fpublications%2Fmanuals-and-guidelines)
The material input of an economic system consists of both raw materials and secondary raw materials, both domestic and imported. Secondary raw materials are subdivided as follows: a) materials (wastes) recovered; b) materials (not derived from waste management) generated as by-products of certain production processes; these by-products can be further subdivided into b.1) materials with economic value exchanged between plants; b.2) intra-plant flows. Case a) can be approximated by waste statistics, assuming that the input to recovery plants equals the output and that all of it becomes secondary raw material. Case b) is currently excluded from official statistics. Ultimately, what is currently evaluated is only the contribution of the waste management system to the circular economy. Other circular uses of materials, such as industrial symbiosis, are excluded. In the future, the portion of secondary raw materials not derived from waste may grow due to its increasing value. In other words, it is expected that the valorization of these materials and their circular flows will be more integrated into the ordinary economy. This will not be visible as circular use but only as reduced extraction of natural resources.
Data quality assessment
Database di Eurostat per dati EU27 e Stati membri: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/env_ac_cur/default/table?lang=en
National
2004-2022
Indicator assessment
The processing relies on the integration of three data sources: waste statistics (ISPRA); international trade statistics (Istat); material flow accounts (Istat). The indicator is defined as the ratio (R / T) between reused materials (R) and total material use (T). A higher rate corresponds to a greater use of secondary materials replacing primary raw materials (and thus extracted natural resources). The numerator (R) includes: "Waste recovery" minus "Waste imports for recovery" plus "Waste exports for recovery." Note that "Waste recovery" does not include energy recovery and backfilling. The denominator (T) includes: "Domestic material consumption" plus reused materials (R). For further details: Circular material use rate — Calculation method — 2018 edition. Eurostat, Luxembourg (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-manuals-and-guidelines/-/KS-GQ-18-013?inheritRedirect=true&redirect=%2Feurostat%2Fpublications%2Fmanuals-and-guidelines)
In 2022, the material circularity rate reached 18.7%, after peaking in 2020 at 20.6%. Italy’s performance in this area of circularity is better than the European average, which stood at 11.5% in 2022 (Table 1, Figure 1).
The circular material use rate increased from 5.8% to 18.7% between 2004 and 2022, a rise of nearly 13 percentage points. This trend can be considered positive (Table 1, Figure 1).
Data
Figure 1: Circular material use rate. Italy, 2004-2022
ISPRA
Table 1: Circular material use rate
ISPRA
2022: provisional estimates
Between 2004 and 2022, Italy’s circular material use rate increased from 5.8% to 18.7% (+12.9 percentage points), showing much stronger growth compared to the European Union, which during the same period increased from 8.2% to 11.5% (+3.3 percentage points). Since 2010, the indicator can be shown disaggregated by material type: biomass, metal ores, non-metallic minerals, and fossil fuels. As shown in Table 1, in 2022, the most reused materials are those derived from metal ores (47.4%), followed by non-metallic minerals (23.2%) and biomass (16.4%).