Circular Economy Country Profile Austria

The Circular Economy Country Profile Austria (2022) provides a comprehensive overview of the status of circular economy (CE) development in Austria. It was compiled by the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the European Topic Centre on Circular Economy and Resource Use (ETC CE) and contains information on political framework conditions, monitoring mechanisms and best practice examples.

The development of a national CE strategy is being led by the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK). This strategy includes measures such as the Action Plan for Sustainable Public Procurement, which defines CE criteria for construction products and electronics, and the Raw Materials Plan 2030, which includes 75 measures for raw materials management. Other important documents include the Bioeconomy Strategy, the Federal Waste Management Plan 2022-2028 and the Microplastics Action Plan, which sets out measures to reduce microplastic pollution.

A central component of the CE strategy is the development of a monitoring and evaluation system that measures the progress of the circular economy. The planned targets include reducing DMC to 14 tonnes per person per year by 2030, reducing the material footprint to 7 tonnes per person per year by 2050, increasing resource efficiency by 50 % by 2030 (base year 2015), increasing the circular material usage rate to 18 % and reducing material consumption in households by 10 % by 2030.

Public initiatives to promote the circular economy include the repair bonus, a support programme for the repair of electrical and electronic equipment financed by EU funds, and the deposit and return system for beverage packaging, which will be introduced from 2025 to increase the collection rate of plastic bottles and cans to 90 % by 2029.

Private initiatives include Lenzing AG, which produces viscose fibres with recycling technology for cotton fibres; EREMA Plastic Recycling Systems, which is the world leader in plastic recycling systems, and BauKarussell, which specialises in social-urban mining for the reuse and recycling of materials from demolished buildings.

In order to overcome the barriers and challenges on the way to a circular economy, future policies should include a mix of legal regulations, promotion of secondary raw material markets and economic instruments. The national CE strategy and the National Recovery Plan provide for investments in take-back systems, sorting facilities and repair subsidies. A combination of awareness-raising, governance and standardisation as well as the involvement of all relevant players along the value chain is seen as the key to success.

You can download the report here: