kg per inhabitant
Packaging waste generated, all materials. Eurostat also reports 149.0 kg recycled per inhabitant.
The packaging desk / Data context
Better packaging decisions start with the right scale.
A source-led view of Germany, the European Union and global plastics. Use it to frame a packaging review, then use your own shipment weights to make the decision.
Three scales. Three defined measures.
Local means Germany, EPRCheck’s operating market. Regional means the EU. Global uses a separate plastics series.
kg per inhabitant
Packaging waste generated, all materials. The EU total was 81.5 million tonnes.
million tonnes
Plastic waste across all applications. OECD estimates 9% was ultimately recycled, after recycling losses.
The global figure is a historical context series, not a 2026 estimate. It includes all plastic waste, not only packaging. Its total tonnes and recycling share must not be ranked against the per-person packaging figures above.
A comparison on the same basis
Germany and the EU are shown for the same year, unit and packaging scope. The EU includes Germany, so these are not two independent populations.
The arithmetic difference is 33.7 kg per inhabitant. It does not measure the footprint of a German seller, the recyclability of a specific parcel, or a change caused by EPRCheck.
Keep materials visible.
The EU aggregate shows why a single “packaging” total hides different material streams.
| Material | Million tonnes | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| Paper & cardboard | 33.2 | 40.8% |
| Plastic | 16.2 | 19.9% |
| Glass | 14.7 | 18.1% |
| Wood | 13.2 | 16.2% |
Selected categories do not sum to 100%; metal and other materials are omitted. Source values are rounded. This is a waste-generation distribution, not a set of recycling rates or licensing prices.
Turn the context into a review you can use.
- Measure the parcel you actually ship.Record packaging-only grams for each component, the number of components and shipment count.
- Keep destination and period together.A weight for one market or year is not automatically the right quantity for another.
- Compare the same specification.If you trial a lighter box, recheck protection, damage and the full component list before drawing a conclusion.
Illustrative arithmetic · not observed sales
A 20 g change across 1,000 parcels
Changing one box from 120 g to 100 g would reduce the box mass by 20 kg: (120 − 100) × 1,000 ÷ 1,000.
This says nothing about total cost, damage, legal reporting scope or environmental benefit. Measure those separately.
Build your weight recordSources, dates and interpretation
- Eurostat — Packaging waste statisticsRead 30 October 2026; source extraction date 16 October 2026. Germany and EU figures shown here refer to 2024. Other country observations in the source can use different years or provisional estimates; no cross-country ranking is reproduced here.
- OECD — Global Plastics Outlook: Economic Drivers, Environmental Impacts and Policy OptionsPublished 22 February 2022; read 30 October 2026. Global plastic-waste observations refer to 2019. All applications, not packaging alone; 9% is the share ultimately recycled after losses. This is a historical baseline, not a claim to be the latest global series.
These figures provide operating context. They do not estimate an individual company’s bill, certify compliance, or determine whether a packaging component must be reported. Review the source period and definitions before reusing the data.