Which European countries do the most sustainable shopping

The wave of sustainability that has swept the fashion world in recent years has not only affected brands but also, and more importantly, consumers. Although we are still a long way from reaching the sustainability goals necessary to maintain the Paris Accords, the tide is slowly beginning to turn with the rise of a new category of shoppers who are more attentive to the impact that both products and the way they are purchased and used can have on the planet. In this regard, the British platform Savoo has compiled a list of the European countries where shopping is most responsible, compiling a Top 10 where Italy is absent and is instead dominated by Finland, whose carbon emissions dropped 20 percent between 2010 and 2020. Although Italy does not feature in the Top 10, however, the study notes that our country surpasses Finland in terms of emissions reductions, which fell 26.03 percent over the same time period, ranking first in Europe followed by Sweden and Greece. Regarding consumer habits, in any case, the metrics that were tracked in addition to emission reductions were the ranking in the Sustainable Development Report, which refers to national policies; the proportional average of waste that is recycled; the increase or decrease in waste generation itself over the past two years; the environmental impact of consumption of goods and services by citizens; and by the number of second-hand markets featured on Tripadvisor.

Finland's first place on the list, then, is a representation of a weighted average of these various factors -and thus other countries in the Top 10 outperform it on certain specific criteria but not in general. For example, Denmark and Slovenia, in second and third place respectively, surpass Finland as a percentage of waste recycled, with the most virtuous country in terms of recycling being Austria, whose recycling rate is 58.2 percent. Things get more shocking when calculating the tons of textile waste produced in a year: 391,752 for Germany, which ranks 10th, while 209,545 for the United Kingdom and 169,949 for Belgium. In terms of household waste, however, Slovenia is the best performer in Europe, with an annual per capita production of 34 kilograms, closely followed by Austria, which produces 39 kilograms instead. On the other side of the spectrum, the worst country for sustainability of consumption habits is Malta, which has the lowest recycling rate of all, at 10.5 percent - even though the number of tons of textile waste produced is among the lowest on the list, at 568 tons per year. The second worst in Europe is Ireland, which increased its consumption by more than two-fifths (or 42.86 percent) between 2010 and 2020, - the highest percentage increase of any country in the ranking, as well as being the birthplace of the Primark chain. Closing out the Top 3 worst countries for sustainable practices is Greece with 142 kilograms of household waste years per person and 1268 tons of textile waste generated annually.