The GCC statistical report confirmed that the region\u2019s waste management sector is evolving from municipal services into a promising market for investment, estimated at US$68.3 billion in 2025 and projected to exceed US$104.06 billion by 2031, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.29 percent from 2025 to 2031.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The GCC collected 283.5 million metric tonnes of waste in 2024, a 20.4 percent increase from 2023. Meanwhile, treated waste totalled 69.0 million metric tonnes, up 6.2 percent year over year. These figures reflect the expansion of treatment infrastructure, recycling and resource recovery, alongside attractive opportunities for private-sector partnerships, particularly in hazardous industrial and medical waste treatment, material recycling, metal and metal-compound recovery, and used-oil re-refining.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Non-hazardous waste made up 97.1 percent of total collected waste, compared with 2.9 percent for hazardous waste. In terms of treatment, hazardous waste accounted for 11.7 percent of total treated quantities, up 1.8 percentage points from 9.9 percent in 2023, while non-hazardous waste accounted for 88.3 percent. Modern and other technical methods for hazardous waste treatment, including physical and chemical treatment, resale and reuse, accounted for the largest share at 61.1 percent, followed by recycling at 21.6 percent, environmentally sanitary landfilling at 15.5 percent and incineration at 1.9 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The report reaffirmed the region\u2019s leadership in solid waste management. Four GCC countries, the UAE, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait, achieved first place globally with a perfect score of 100 out of 100 in the Sustainable Solid Waste Management index within the global Environmental Performance Index issued by Yale University. Bahrain scored 98.51 and Saudi Arabia scored 92.27 in the assessment covering 180 countries. The UAE recorded the highest collected volume of agricultural waste at 2.4 million tonnes, followed by Kuwait at 0.6 million tonnes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Collected agricultural waste increased by a cumulative 79.9 percent from 2017 to 2024, while agricultural GDP reached US$39.9 billion. Total collected municipal waste reached 48.8 million metric tonnes in 2024, a cumulative growth of 5 percent over 2017\u20132024. Household waste accounted for more than 45 percent of total collected municipal waste, while organic waste comprised over 30 percent, ranging from 30.6 percent to 47.0 percent. The quantity of municipal solid waste disposed of or recycled reached 57.8 million tonnes, of which 52.1 million tonnes were landfilled using environmentally sound methods and 5.7 million tonnes were fully recycled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Collected construction and demolition waste recorded the highest annual growth rate, rising 26.5 percent to 226.6 million metric tonnes in 2024, up from 179.1 million tonnes in 2023, 136.7 million tonnes in 2022 and 109.9 million tonnes in 2021. GDP from construction activities rose from US$130.7 billion in 2021 to US$187.8 billion in 2024, a 43.6 percent increase. Over the same period, the sector\u2019s workforce grew from 3.3 million to 4.7 million, up 42.4 percent. In 2025, the GCC Standardisation Organisation adopted the GCC Standard for Sustainable Buildings, developed by the Gulf Organisation for Research and Development to assess the environmental performance of buildings and infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the industrial sector, hazardous waste generation reached 6.4 million metric tonnes in 2024, representing 77.6 percent of the region\u2019s total hazardous waste generated. Generation grew by 19.5 percent year over year, while collected waste volumes increased by 17.6 percent compared with 2023. This coincided with industrial GDP rising from US$885.4 billion in 2021 to US$1.256 trillion, while the industrial workforce expanded from 5 million to 7.5 million workers. Under the Basel Convention, the GCC encompasses 28 specialised facilities for hazardous industrial waste recycling and metal and metal-compound reclamation, with an average annual growth of 20.1 percent, and 43 accredited facilities for used-oil re-refining and reuse, with an average annual rate of change of 25.2 percent between 2019 and 2024.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hazardous medical waste generation reached 134,600 metric tonnes in 2024, accounting for 1.6 percent of all hazardous waste generated. Generation rose by 14.3 percent year over year, while the volume of waste collected increased by 14.6 percent compared with 2023. Healthcare sector GDP increased from US$63.1 billion in 2019 to US$83.9 billion in 2024. The number of hospitals grew by 10.6 percent, from 812 to 898 hospitals, and the total healthcare workforce rose from 755,000 to 1.054 million personnel. GCC countries operate 27 dedicated incineration sites for hazardous medical waste, with a combined design capacity of 176,100 metric tonnes, an increase of 67.1 percent from 2019 to 2024. The sector is governed by the GCC Uniform Law for Medical Waste Management and its executive regulations, which regulate eight main types of medical waste through 23 regulatory articles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In accordance with international environmental treaties and the Basel Convention, exported hazardous waste from GCC states reached 0.8 million metric tonnes in 2024. Of these quantities, 72.6 percent were designated for recycling or metal and metal-compound recovery, while 9.8 percent were directed to recycling or recovering other inorganic materials. GCC states submitted a cumulative 92 national reports to the Basel Convention Secretariat, up from 87 in 2023, reaffirming the integrity of environmental governance and statistical transparency.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The GCC statistical report confirmed that the region\u2019s waste management sector is evolving from municipal services into a promising market for investment, estimated at US$68.3 billion in 2025 and projected to exceed US$104.06 billion by 2031, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.29 percent from 2025 to 2031. The GCC collected 283.5 …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":68075,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68074","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68074"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68074\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68076,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68074\/revisions\/68076"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uaebarq.ae\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}