Singapore Leads a New Circularity Ranking

A 75-country study named Singapore the world's best at recycling and keeping materials in use. Three of its four indicators are not as straightforward as they seem.

A study published in July/August 2026 by the custom-packaging company Arka ranks 75 countries on how well they keep products and materials in use rather than discarding them. Singapore ranks first, ahead of Austria, Slovenia, Germany and Latvia. The composite score ties together four measures: raw material use per dollar of GDP, the municipal recycling rate, net trade in used clothing, and electronic waste generated per person.

The ranking is a broad snapshot of where waste infrastructure exists and what it looks like. The indicators underneath it are worth considering in more detail, because in at least three places the factor and the behaviour it stands in for do not match perfectly.

Chart 1: The composite circularity score, top 10 of 75 countries.

Singapore's 52% is not a household number

Singapore takes the top spot largely on recycling, and its National Environment Agency does report an overall reuse rate of 52%. The same statistics put the domestic rate (waste from households) at 11%, the lowest on record.

The gap is structural. The national figure covers construction and demolition debris, ferrous metals and slag: industrial streams recycled at close to 100%, which swamp the household contribution. Singapore's environment ministry has told parliament that the domestic rate hovered around 20% before sliding into the low teens. The country leading a consumer-facing circularity index is one where roughly nine in ten kilograms of household rubbish are not recycled.

Chart 2: Singapore's headline recycling rate against its household rate.

The cross-country comparison is also less even than it looks. Eurostat's 2023 data put Austria's municipal recycling rate at 62.8%, above the EU's 2025 target, against the 51.47% the study assigns it. Recycling rates travel badly between statistical systems, and the study's figures sit well below the official national ones for several countries in its own top five

Exporting clothes is not the same as downcycling them

The textiles indicator scores countries that ship out more used clothing than they take in. The European Environment Agency has spent years arguing against that inference. EU exports of used textiles tripled between 2000 and 2019 to nearly 1.7 million tonnes, and the agency's assessment is blunt: the eventual fate of those exports is highly uncertain. In 2019, 46% went to Africa and 41% to Asia, much of it into dedicated economic zones for sorting, downcycling into industrial rags, or onward re-export.

That reframes two entries in the table. Germany's large net export volume measures throughput, not garments saved. And Latvia's net-import position — read in the study as a national preference for second-hand shopping — more plausibly reflects the Baltics' long-established role as a sorting and re-export hub for textiles collected further west.

The e-waste measure doesn’t reward recycling infrastructure enough

The fourth indicator counts e-waste generated, not e-waste handled. The UN's Global E-waste Monitor finds Europe generates more per person than any other region, at 17.6 kg, while also formally collecting and recycling 42.8% of it — roughly double the global rate of 22.3%. Under the study's scoring, a country improves its position by buying fewer appliances or by becoming poorer, and gains nothing for building collection infrastructure. The top five make the point. Latvia ranks fifth at 11.9 kg per person, while Singapore ranks first at 20.3 kg.

What the leaders actually share is time

Germany's Packaging Ordinance of 1991 was the first statute anywhere to put extended producer responsibility into law, with Duales System Deutschland established the year before to run parallel collection. Arka's packaging specialist makes a similar point in the study, arguing that the leaders' positions “reflect 30-plus years of consistent policy and public participation” rather than any recent push.

Set against the baseline, the whole top ten looks strong. UNEP's Global Waste Management Outlook found that just nearly 19% of municipal solid waste was recycled worldwide in 2020, while 38% was openly dumped or burned. Every country in the top ten has a higher recycling rate than the global figure.

The more useful reading is narrower than the headline. The index maps where waste systems have been built and financed, which is more important in the long run.

Country	Circularity Performance Score (top = 100)	Material Efficiency Score (0-100)	Recycling Score (0-100)	Reuse / Second-hand Score (0-100)	E-waste Score (0-100)
Singapore	100	71.27	100	40.92	24.71
Austria	98.78	76.87	98.97	27.29	27.38
Slovenia	93.49	67.03	88.63	38.97	37.26
Germany	91.6	77.79	90.36	18.43	21.29
Latvia	87.35	58.66	69.37	55.97	56.65
Denmark	81.38	73.94	60	44.33	17.11
Netherlands	81.37	95.01	54.03	17.47	17.87
Ireland	81.35	81.93	49.98	44.53	23.57
Italy	80.49	83.9	41.97	49.02	29.66
Republic of Korea	79.51	66.74	73.87	17.67	33.84
Thailand	77.67	42.29	66.39	53	61.98
Czechia	77.65	64.61	57.88	40.15	39.16
Benin	77.32	27.73	48.01	91.55	97.72
Estonia	75.7	50.34	63.19	44.57	47.91
Belgium	75.55	82.91	63.95	0	19.39
Slovakia	75.23	67.81	39.28	56.48	43.35
Congo	74.89	35.65	50.32	68.1	91.63
Lithuania	73.56	52.72	50.9	52.84	50.95
Israel	73.35	68.58	46.67	37.66	39.16
Croatia	73.27	58.56	50.11	42.82	51.33
Hungary	73.02	59.82	45.63	49.44	47.53
Canada	72.53	47.77	68.28	40.38	25.10
United Arab Emirates	72.4	63.19	17.12	100	30.04
Sweden	71.32	71.49	46.28	34.62	22.05
Finland	71.3	56.59	55.92	44.34	20.91
Japan	70.38	80.38	30.14	44.39	21.29
Bulgaria	69.08	38.43	54.16	55.96	51.71
Oman	68.57	40.17	57.64	49.78	42.21
Poland	68.5	54.2	51.29	31.9	50.57
Bahrain	68.33	54.24	53.3	35.89	34.22
Spain	67.98	77.78	33.29	31.92	27.38
Albania	66.45	47.23	33.25	58.55	70.34
Greece	65.32	66.42	30.69	45.04	31.18
Eswatini	64.2	25.17	56.5	44.55	78.33
Portugal	63.47	61.91	30.69	44.9	34.22
Colombia	61.95	46.4	32.45	43.99	73.38
Cyprus	60.2	62.27	25.18	33.24	52.47
Tunisia	57.64	33.93	7.58	92.99	75.67
Costa Rica	55.96	58.5	7.48	55.28	53.61
Türkiye	54.99	48.59	22.96	42.1	53.61
Serbia	54.55	31.1	34.74	47.48	59.70
Dominican Republic	53.72	52.2	11.43	44.05	68.44
New Zealand	53.56	61.14	17.59	37.61	27.38
Myanmar	53.4	33.94	21.06	43.97	96.58
Jordan	53.22	40.91	13.36	53.54	78.71
Morocco	52.25	36.57	15.47	51.55	83.65
Malaysia	51.44	38.56	0.12	86.12	55.51
Egypt	50.63	30.36	23.95	44.69	77.95
Indonesia	50.62	38.41	16.93	43.99	75.67
Mexico	50.57	46.36	14.22	43.99	57.03
Qatar	50.1	65.74	0.48	40.8	40.3
South Africa	48.77	36.77	15.99	45.62	68.44
United Republic of Tanzania	48.5	26.1	14.32	51.24	98.48
Romania	48.2	35.94	14.19	56.18	52.47
Iraq	47.75	48.48	0	44.37	78.71
Mauritius	47.73	47.61	7.58	43.95	55.89
Cambodia	47.18	24.38	7.58	62.52	96.2
Saudi Arabia	46.85	54.02	7.06	40.04	36.88
Republic of Moldova	44.87	29.23	11.62	48.86	76.05
North Macedonia	44.2	42.62	0.46	48.69	63.88
Kazakhstan	44.18	30.37	21.3	33.96	63.12
Viet Nam	43.86	25.73	14.32	43.87	81.75
Mauritania	42.56	16.61	15.28	48.61	91.63
Uzbekistan	40.69	21.96	9.89	43.99	87.83
Botswana	40.05	34.28	1.09	45.06	68.82
Peru	39.81	31.45	1.67	43.99	77.19
Ukraine	39.75	19.23	9.43	56.12	68.06
Malawi	39.67	10.38	7.58	58.62	100
Democratic Republic of the Congo	38.86	11.75	9.31	50.5	99.62
Mozambique	37.43	17.67	2.77	46.54	99.62
Brazil	37.34	30.43	3.02	43.99	58.56
Zambia	36.48	4.17	11.43	52.6	97.72
Armenia	35.37	24.01	0.26	46.26	72.24
Mongolia	33.9	0	16.71	50.7	79.47
Chile	32.58	23.45	1.28	43.01	57.41

Each factor rescaled to a 0–100 score (with direction corrected so higher is always better) and combined into the weighted Circularity Performance Score.

Data: Arka circularity study, July/August 2026. Charts produced for this article from the published dataset and the cited official statistics.

Provided by Ethan Parker. Fact-Checked by Irfan Ahmad.

Read next: 

• Researchers Call for Greater Legal Accountability and Transparency as Social Media Reveals Inferred Personal Information

• Record Attacks on Education Disrupt Learning for Millions of Children Worldwide