Poor performance in municipal recycling: The case of Chile

As part of the global effort to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), countries are attempting to minimize landfilling, and instead, promote recycling. The percentage of household waste collected for recycling and mass (metric tonnes) of recyclable material collected by municipalities have been defined as indicators to measure progress. However, by 2019, data were available for only 70 of the 193 United Nations' member states and most of the data accounts for countries in the Global North. Presented here are the first national, and locally disaggregated municipal recycling data from Chile. Between 2013 and 2017, less than 0.8 per cent of total household waste was separatedly collected for recycling. An econometric model is used to analyse factors influencing local-level separate collection among municipalities that have a recycling service. The variance of separate collection rates is explained by education, total residual waste sent to landfills, duration of recycling services, composting, percentage of urban population, and by regional disparities.