Europe’s material footprint

From 2010 to 2022, the EU’s material footprint remained relatively stable: it fell by 7% from 2010 to 2016 and increased by 5% from 2016 to 2019. In 2020 the material footprint fell by 5% to 6.1 billion tonnes, but the 2020 data is heavily influenced by the economic slowdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which is considered as a temporary phenomenon. From 2022 to 2023, the material footprint fell by 4.5%, and it is a drop of 5.7% when compared to 2010. This drop is exampled mainly by a drop in the consumption of metals related possibly to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and remains to be seen if the drop is a temporary or a more sustained phenomenon.

Of the various material groups, consumption of non-metallic minerals is the highest, accounting for 53% of the footprint in 2023; changes in consumption in this group were largely responsible for the overall trend. Biomass was the next largest group (22%), followed by fossil fuels (17%) and metals (7%). Although non-metallic minerals account for a large part of the total material footprint, they have less of an impact on the environment and climate than metals and fossil fuels, relative to their shares of the material footprint.

The EU’s total material footprint is above the global average and much above those of low- and middle-income countries. This level of resource consumption exceeds the planet’s ‘safe operating space’ for resource extraction, meaning that, if the world were to consume resources at the level of the EU, the capacity of the planet to provide these resources would be exceeded.

The EU’s material footprint refers to the amount of material extracted from nature, both inside and outside the EU, to manufacture or provide the goods and services consumed by EU citizens. The Eighth Environment Action Programme calls for a significant decrease in the EU’s material footprint to safeguard precious natural resources and because the extraction and processing of these resources has significant environmental and climate impacts, such as climate change and biodiversity loss.

The material footprint provides a comprehensive measure of all materials extracted to satisfy consumption demand in the EU, including materials extracted outside the EU and imported. The demand for metals and fossil fuels is met mainly by imports, while the demand for biomass and non-metallic minerals is met mainly by domestic extraction (see the EU’s Raw Material Information System for more information). This indicates a growing reliance of the EU on other countries to satisfy its need for materials.