Mercedes-Benz is estimated to produce approximately 780,000 metric tonnes (1.72 billion pounds) of waste in 2026, across every site the group runs worldwide.
How much waste does Mercedes produce from actually building vehicles? About 473,000 tonnes of it. The rest comes from offices, workshops, logistics yards and, in the last reported year, a lot of building work.
Mercedes-Benz have set four waste targets for 2030 and mark all four on plan. Every one is measured per vehicle built, so none of them reaches the part of the roughly 780,000 tonnes expected in 2026 that never touched a vehicle.
Mercedes-Benz's annual waste totals (2024-2026)
Mercedes-Benz publish a group waste total every year, so the first two lines below are their own reporting and only the third is an estimate.
| Year | Total waste (tonnes) | Change on prior year |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 780,000 | -122,400 |
| 2025 | 902,400 | +183,000 |
| 2024 | 719,400 | baseline |
Note: 2024 and 2025 come from the Mercedes-Benz Group Annual Report 2025, with 2024 restated there by 600 tonnes. The 2026 line moves production waste on the group's own volume outlook and takes everything else at the average of the two reported years.
A 25% rise in one year is a large move for a manufacturer whose output barely changed. Mercedes-Benz sold fewer cars and fewer vans in 2025 than in 2024, not more.
None of that rise came from the vehicle lines. Waste from production fell in 2025, by 33,200 tonnes.
Why the run of figures starts in 2024
2024 is the first year Mercedes-Benz measured their waste the way they measure it now, under the European sustainability reporting standards. That definition counts everything the group throws away at every site it operates.
Before that, their reporting was built around the factories. The 2023 group total was 605,000 tonnes, of which 565,000 came from production, leaving about 40,000 tonnes for everything else.
The very next year that same line reads 201,400 tonnes. Nothing five-folded overnight, the boundary moved, so chaining the two totals would invent a trend that did not happen.
Where the jump in the total came from
Mercedes-Benz report their total in two parts. One part is waste from production, meaning the scrap, sand, emulsions and offcuts that come off a vehicle line. The other part is everything the group throws away that is not that.
In 2025 the production part fell to 484,800 tonnes, the lowest since at least 2019. The other part rose to 417,600 tonnes, more than double the year before. Put another way, 46% of everything Mercedes-Benz threw away that year had nothing to do with building a vehicle.
Mercedes-Benz give the reason in a footnote. The increase, they write, is "due to one-off construction and demolition measures" and concerns non-production-related waste generated in operations.
Knocking down an old hall and putting up a new one produces construction and demolition waste, which is heavy and arrives all at once.
It is also the biggest waste stream there is. Construction accounted for 38.4% of all waste generated in the European Union in 2022, more than any other activity, so a carmaker rebuilding its plants moves its own numbers hard.
The two parts side by side
The two move in opposite directions, so separating them makes both readable.
| Year | From building vehicles | From everything else |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 473,000 tonnes | 307,000 tonnes |
| 2025 | 484,800 tonnes | 417,600 tonnes |
| 2024 | 518,000 tonnes | 201,400 tonnes |
Note: Mercedes-Benz report the total and the production share, and the second column is the difference between them. The 2026 figures are estimates, the other four are theirs.
The 2026 projection sits in the middle of a wide range. If the building work stops completely, the group total lands near 675,000 tonnes. If 2025 repeats, it stays near 890,000.
Nothing in Mercedes-Benz's own outlook settles which, because their planned spending on land and buildings in 2026 is roughly level with 2025.
What Mercedes-Benz actually makes
Mercedes-Benz Group AG is the Stuttgart parent of the Mercedes-Benz car and van businesses, with revenue of 132.2 billion euros in 2025 and 164,120 employees at the end of that year. The group runs three segments, and only two of them make anything physical.
- Mercedes-Benz Cars. Passenger cars and SUVs, from the A-Class to the S-Class, plus the Mercedes-AMG, Maybach and G-Class lines. Unit sales were 1,801,291 in 2025, down 9%.
- Mercedes-Benz Vans. Light commercial vehicles such as the Sprinter and Vito. Unit sales were 359,136, down 11%.
- Mercedes-Benz Financial Services. Leasing, financing and insurance. It moves money rather than metal, so it barely registers in the waste figures.
Behind those two vehicle divisions sit 30 production sites worldwide. Every one of them holds ISO 14001 certification, the international standard for running an environmental management system.
Sindelfingen, the site above, shows where the best of that scrap goes. Steel arrives from voestalpine's works in Linz by rail, and since 2021 the same train has carried Sindelfingen's press-shop scrap back to be recycled by the supplier who sent it.
Sites like it are also where the estate gets rebuilt while vehicles are being built, which is why one waste total holds two very different stories.
Six straight years of falling factory waste
The production half has its own record, and it runs back further, because Mercedes-Benz measured it the same way long before the group total changed shape.
| Year | Waste from production (tonnes) | Change on prior year |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 473,000 | -11,800 |
| 2025 | 484,800 | -33,200 |
| 2024 | 518,000 | -47,000 |
| 2023 | 565,000 | -19,000 |
| 2022 | 584,000 | -26,000 |
| 2021 | 610,000 | -49,000 |
| 2020 | 659,000 | -127,000 |
| 2019 | 786,000 | baseline |
Note: 2021 to 2025 are reported figures, and figures before 2022 were restated after the Daimler Truck demerger. 2019 and 2020 multiply the per-vehicle rate by the production units, both published by Mercedes-Benz, which reproduces their own 2021 to 2023 totals to within 0.3%.
That is a fall in every single year on record, and 301,200 tonnes less in 2025 than in 2019, a drop of 38%.
Two things are doing the work. Mercedes-Benz built fewer vehicles across the period, and they got better at not wasting material while building them.
Waste per vehicle built
The rate is reported separately for cars and for vans, in kilograms of production waste per vehicle that comes off the line.
| Year | Per car built | Per van built |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | 358.1 kg | 83.9 kg |
| 2024 | 367.5 kg | 88.6 kg |
| 2023 | 401.2 kg | 103.3 kg |
| 2022 | 438.7 kg | 89.2 kg |
| 2021 | 513.9 kg | 85.8 kg |
| 2020 | 510.2 kg | 95.8 kg |
| 2019 | 467.2 kg | 111.5 kg |
Note: All figures as reported by Mercedes-Benz. The car and van rates are measured on vehicles produced, not vehicles sold, which is why they cannot be multiplied by the unit sales figures above.
The car rate peaked at 513.9 kg in 2021 and has come down in each of the four years since, a cut of 30%. A car leaving the line in 2025 left roughly 156 kg less waste behind it than one built in 2021.
Most of what a vehicle plant throws out is not rubbish in any household sense. It is metal. Mercedes-Benz name scrap, sand, emulsions, rinsing solutions from technical cleaning, household-like waste and packaging as their significant waste streams, and the first of those dominates the tonnage.
Their reported savings are unglamorous. In 2025 the group credited less scrap in axle production, better laser welding, and cutting press parts to the millimetre.
They also built the plumbing for it. In 2024 Mercedes-Benz put a measurement system into their German sites that charges waste back to whichever operation generated it.
Recovered is not the same as recycled
Mercedes-Benz report that 865,700 tonnes of their 2025 waste, 95.9% of it, was diverted from disposal. That is a high number and it is not the same as recycled.
| Route the waste took | Tonnes in 2025 | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Recycling | 735,000 | 81.4% |
| Other recovery including energy | 125,100 | 13.9% |
| Landfill | 21,300 | 2.4% |
| Other disposal operations | 12,700 | 1.4% |
| Preparation for reuse | 5,600 | 0.6% |
| Incineration without energy recovery | 2,700 | 0.3% |
Note: Built from the hazardous and non-hazardous lines Mercedes-Benz publish for 2025, which sum to the reported group total of 902,400 tonnes.
The 125,100 tonnes in the second row is mostly energy recovery, which means burning the material and capturing the heat. It keeps waste out of a landfill and it is a step up the waste hierarchy from disposal, but the material itself is gone and no new part gets made from it.
Mercedes-Benz publish that distinction themselves. Their own non-recycled waste line reads 161,900 tonnes for 2025, 17.9% of the total, which puts the genuinely recycled share at 82.1% rather than 95.9%.
Disposal moved in the wrong direction
The routes that end in disposal took 36,700 tonnes in 2025 against 24,100 in 2024, a rise of 52%. Non-hazardous landfill alone went from 5,700 tonnes to 19,700.
That fits the construction explanation. Rubble, mixed demolition material and contaminated soil are far harder to send back into a supply chain than clean press-shop steel.
One number went the other way. Hazardous waste sent to landfill fell from 8,800 tonnes to 1,600. Hazardous material is only 6.0% of the group total.
The four waste targets Mercedes-Benz have set
Every waste target the group carries falls due in 2030, is measured per vehicle in production, and runs against a 2023 baseline.
| What has to happen by 2030 | Where it started in 2023 | Where 2025 sits |
|---|---|---|
| Cars, total waste per vehicle down to 325.0 kg | 401.2 kg | 358.1 kg |
| Vans, total waste per vehicle down to 86.8 kg | 103.3 kg | 83.9 kg |
| Cars, waste for disposal per vehicle down to 1.6 kg | 3.5 kg | 1.9 kg |
| Vans, waste for disposal per vehicle down to 2.6 kg | 9.1 kg | 5.3 kg |
Note: The percentage cuts and the 2023 baselines are Mercedes-Benz's; the 2030 figures in the first column apply those percentages to those baselines.
The four are not moving at the same speed. Vans have already gone past their total-waste target with five years to spare, cutting 18.8% against a promise of 16%. Cars are a little over half way to theirs.
On disposal the picture flips. Cars have delivered 46 of the 54 percentage points they promised, while vans have managed 42 of 71 and have the furthest left to travel.
Mercedes-Benz tightened both disposal targets during 2025, saying they had found more room to cut.
The fifth goal has no date on it
Mercedes-Benz also want secondary raw material to make up 40% of the material going into their vehicles, against 17.6% in 2025. That one is voluntary and the deadline is only "within the next decade".
None of the five goals covers the 417,600 tonnes that came from everything except building vehicles. All four dated targets are per-vehicle measures, so the fastest-growing part of the group's waste sits outside them.
Frequently asked questions about Mercedes-Benz's waste
Below are the questions that come up most often about Mercedes-Benz's waste.
How much waste does Mercedes-Benz produce each year?
Around 780,000 tonnes in 2026, on our estimate. Their last reported year, 2025, came to 902,400 tonnes across every site the group operates, and 2024 came to 719,400 tonnes.
Why did Mercedes-Benz's waste total rise in 2025?
Building work, not car-making. Mercedes-Benz attribute the increase to one-off construction and demolition at their sites, and the waste from actually producing vehicles fell by 33,200 tonnes in the same year.
How much of Mercedes-Benz's waste is actually recycled?
82.1% in 2025, by their own non-recycled waste line. The wider figure of 95.9% is waste diverted from disposal, which also counts material burned for energy rather than turned into anything new.
What does a Mercedes-Benz factory throw out most of?
Metal. Mercedes-Benz list scrap first among their significant production waste streams, ahead of sand, emulsions, technical cleaning solutions, household-like waste and packaging.
How much waste does building one Mercedes-Benz car create?
358.1 kg in 2025, down from 513.9 kg at the 2021 peak. A Mercedes-Benz van is much lighter on waste at 83.9 kg, because vans use less pressed sheet metal per unit of vehicle.
Have Mercedes-Benz hit their waste targets?
One of the four, five years early. Vans passed the 2030 total-waste-per-vehicle target in 2025, while the other three are still short and none of them falls due until 2030.
Does Mercedes-Benz report their packaging waste?
No. Packaging is named as one of their significant waste streams, but no separate tonnage is published for it, which leaves the stream most producer responsibility rules are built around invisible in the group's figures.
How much does Mercedes-Benz send to landfill?
21,300 tonnes in 2025, 2.4% of the total. That is up sharply from 14,500 tonnes in 2024, driven by non-hazardous material while hazardous waste sent to landfill fell by 7,200 tonnes.
Images: Alexander Migl
