Waste management is responsible for approximately 3.2%* of global greenhouse gas emissions. The sector has significant environmental impacts beyond carbon and methane emissions, including water and air pollution with significant health impacts. Pollution from waste also represents a major, growing problem for ecosystems like oceans, wetlands and rivers and undermines their natural capacity to mitigate pollution and climate change.

The Spatial Finance Initiative Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant Database for Europe provides information on municipal wastewater treatment plants in Europe with a capacity of at least 100,000 population equivalent. The database contains 1,490 facilities with exact geolocation and provides information about ownership, capacity and plant type where available.

This information was manually collected, validated and enriched by combining information from various European and country specific databases and web-based map sources. This is a work in progress and is a first step in developing a global, open asset-level database for the municipal wastewater treatment sector. Future work will also expand into the municipal solid waste management sector. Please contact spatialfinanceinitiative@cgfi.ac.uk to inform us about any errors, omissions or other feedback.

The Spatial Finance Initiative Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant Database for Europe can be used by others and is available under a CC BY 4.0 license. The suggested citation is: Christiaen, C, Spatial Finance Initiative Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant Database for Europe (January 2023)

^{*Ritchie, H., & Roser, M. (2017). CO₂ and greenhouse gas emissions. Our world in data.}