The focus on waste composition analyses of mixed waste is increasing in EU policies and legislation. While such analyses for several years have been used voluntarily as supporting method for reporting on municipal waste, and as a verification and cross-checking method for packaging, they have more recently also become an obligatory method for monitoring and reporting on batteries and textiles.
This report forms part of an assignment to support the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in meeting new EU requirements related to waste composition analyses and reporting. The study reviews the current Swedish system for waste composition analyses and presents key results from recent analyses. The report covers packaging waste, textile waste and battery waste, as well as municipal waste more broadly.
The study combines several data sources and methods. Available data were compiled through a desktop study, interviews with key actors in the waste sector, and existing datasets held by SMED. Waste composition data for residual household waste were obtained from Avfall Web, a Swedish web-based system for reporting municipal waste data and complemented with additional sorting analyses to address specific data gaps. Data on bulky municipal waste were collected from municipal composition analysis protocols, while results for mixed commercial and industrial waste and separately collected streams were based on existing national studies and data from producer responsibility organisations.
The findings show that Sweden has a long-established and comprehensive system for conducting standardized waste composition analyses of household residual waste, covering a large share of the mixed municipal waste stream. Compositional analyses of municipal bulky waste are also conducted but in a more limited and less systematic manner.
A comparison between existing Swedish manuals for waste composition analyses and relevant EU requirements shows minor methodological differences in the sorting of textiles and batteries. The complementary analyses conducted within this study indicate that these differences have little impact on reported results. The main exception concerns footwear. Overall, variations in results are primarily explained by the inherent variability of waste composition analyses, particularly for smaller waste fractions.
Municipal waste generated by commercial activities are currently not analysed in Sweden on a regular basis. However, a large national study carried out for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency in 2024–2025 included this waste stream and provides new insights into its composition, as well as into mixed commercial and industrial waste more broadly.
Further development of national data collection could improve data quality, transparency, and future EU reporting. Potential improvements include updating national manuals to incorporate footwear classified as textiles, providing guidance on batteries embedded in WEEE for sorting contractors, increasing the coverage of municipal bulky waste analyses, and establishing regular analyses of mixed commercial and industrial waste. Together, these measures would strengthen the overall data basis for waste composition reporting.