Volkswagen is expected to produce about 2.85 million metric tonnes of waste in 2026 (6.3 billion pounds), across every plant the Group operates, the Chinese joint ventures included.
So how much waste does Volkswagen produce that nobody recovers? Most of the total is production scrap metal that goes straight back out for recycling. By Volkswagen's own measure 378,140 tonnes in 2025, or 12.3%, was neither recycled nor reused.
Volkswagen report where almost every tonne goes, and in 2026 that comes to roughly 2.85 million. The exception is the 108,629 tonnes booked in 2025 under a line their own footnote defines as waste whose disposal route could not be verified.
Volkswagen's annual waste totals (2023-2026)
The Group publishes a full waste table for 2025 and 2024, and published 2023 alongside it when the European sustainability reporting rules took effect. Only the last row below is ours.
| Year | Total waste (tonnes) | Change on prior year |
|---|---|---|
| 2026 | 2,847,000 | -237,812 |
| 2025 | 3,084,812 | +153,396 |
| 2024 | 2,931,416 | -130,237 |
| 2023 | 3,061,653 | baseline |
Note: Figures to 2025 come from Volkswagen's own 2025 and 2024 reports, adding the consolidated Group column to the separate one for the Chinese joint ventures. The 2026 row applies their own production trend to 2025, giving about 2,847,000 tonnes.
That trend is the Group's own output, 4,171 thousand vehicles built in the first half of 2026 against 4,519 thousand in the same half of 2025, with waste per vehicle held at the 2025 rate. Volkswagen's group-wide table starts in 2023, so earlier years are not shown.
Volkswagen built 1.0% fewer vehicles in 2025 and still generated 5.2% more waste, while the fall expected in 2026 follows a first half that ran 7.7% lower.
Who are Volkswagen
Volkswagen Group is the parent company of ten vehicle brands, among them Volkswagen, Škoda, SEAT, CUPRA, Audi, Porsche, Bentley, Lamborghini and Ducati, plus the truck and bus maker TRATON.
They run 111 production facilities in 16 European countries and 10 countries across the Americas, Asia and Africa, and employ 663 thousand people. In 2025 they delivered 9.0 million vehicles and reported sales revenue of 321.9 billion euros.
That spread is why the waste total is so much larger than a single carmaker's. It covers engine and transmission plants, truck factories and component sites, not just the lines where finished cars roll off.
Where the 3 million tonnes ended up
Volkswagen sort every tonne into one of six destinations, three of them recovery and three of them disposal. Their 2025 split came out as follows.
| Where it went | Tonnes | Share of total |
|---|---|---|
| Recycling | 2,555,358 | 82.8% |
| Other recovery | 154,914 | 5.0% |
| Preparation for reuse | 151,314 | 4.9% |
| Other disposal routes | 108,629 | 3.5% |
| Landfill | 89,932 | 2.9% |
| Incineration | 24,666 | 0.8% |
Note: All six rows are Volkswagen's own 2025 figures, again adding the Group column to the Chinese joint ventures. The rows sum to one tonne more than the published total because of rounding in the source.
Taken together, 92.8% of the 2025 waste went for recovery and 7.2% for disposal, which is the order the waste hierarchy asks for. Metal is what lifts the recovery share that high.
Stamping offcuts and machining swarf have an established resale value, so recovering those materials is ordinary commercial practice rather than an environmental programme.
The number Volkswagen themselves single out is the one that did not make it. Excluding anything prepared for reuse, 378,140 tonnes were not recycled in 2025, or 12.3% of everything the Group produced.
Why part of the disposal total has no verified destination
Two lines in that table are defined by what Volkswagen could not establish rather than by where the waste went. Their footnotes say so directly.
Waste whose recovery operation cannot be verified is booked under other recovery actions, and waste whose disposal operation cannot be verified is booked under other disposal actions. In 2025 those two lines held 263,543 tonnes between them, 8.5% of the total.
The disposal half is the one that moved. It went from 8,836 tonnes in 2024 to 108,629 tonnes in 2025, while landfill fell 39% over the same twelve months.
Two readings of the same jump
Landfill fell while unverified disposal rose twelve-fold. That may be a genuine change in where the waste went, or it may be that tonnes previously recorded as landfill could no longer be confirmed as such, and Volkswagen do not say which.
The distinction matters because the landfill line and the unverified line describe very different outcomes. Volkswagen also flag that their totals for waste, recycling and landfill contain estimated values.
Where the waste is made inside the plant
Volkswagen name five waste streams in their own reporting, and they follow the order in which a car gets built.
- Scrap metal. Filings, sheet metal stamping waste, castings and other metal debris. Steel dominates in body production and aluminium in engines and transmissions. Volkswagen call this the majority of their production waste, and it is why steel from vehicles has a market of its own.
- Plastic waste. Generated in injection moulding, extrusion and the machining of interior parts, bumpers and structural components. Mainly polypropylene, polyethylene, polyurethane and composite materials, which is the mix that makes recycled plastic in cars hard to scale.
- Paint sludge. Left behind when bodies are painted. Its make-up follows the paint and can include solvents, pigments, resins, fillers and additives.
- Packaging from incoming parts. Paper, cardboard and plastic that arrives with components delivered to the line.
- Hazardous waste. From chemical surface treatment and coating of body parts, replacing used oils and lubricants, and cleaning agents and solvents. It came to 245,759 tonnes in 2025, 8.0% of the total.
Those five processes run at every vehicle and component plant the Group owns, which is what carries the Volkswagen number so far above a single carmaker's.
The packaging Volkswagen does not report
There is one waste stream in that list you will not find a figure for anywhere in the report. Volkswagen publish no packaging number at all.
The reason is a definition. Under the European standards, packaging means material passed on to the user or consumer, and Volkswagen state that the transport protection used when vehicles move to dealerships is removed before handover.
So it is not packaging under that definition and does not enter the report. The cardboard and plastic arriving with components sits inside the waste total instead, counted by weight but never identified as packaging.
For a manufacturer that moves parts between hundreds of sites, that gap covers a lot of material. Most of it is tertiary packaging, and much of the automotive supply chain now runs on returnable transit packaging precisely because the volumes are so high.
What Volkswagen says about their environmental record
The 2025 reporting year closed a target Volkswagen set fifteen years ago. Their environmental improvement metric, a weighted average of five measures per vehicle against a 2010 baseline, was meant to improve 45% by 2025.
| Measured per vehicle | Change since 2010 | A year earlier |
|---|---|---|
| Overall improvement | -53.0% | -48.5% |
| Waste for disposal | -81.9% | -79.4% |
| CO2 emissions | -71.0% | -62.8% |
| Solvent emissions | -69.5% | -67.5% |
| Water withdrawal | -33.3% | -27.1% |
| Energy use | -23.8% | -21.5% |
Note: All values are Volkswagen's own for 2025 against a 2010 baseline, with 2024 beside them, from their environmental management chapter. They cover production-specific volumes at passenger car, van and component plants, a narrower boundary than the waste table above.
They passed it comfortably. Disposal waste per vehicle fell from 23.3 kg in 2010 to roughly 4.2 kg in 2025, the strongest of the five measures.
Set against the group total, the two numbers point opposite ways. Disposal waste per vehicle improved again in 2025, while the tonnage the Group actually sent for disposal rose from 189,914 to 223,227 tonnes, up 17.5%.
Both can be true at once, because the per-vehicle metric covers car and component plants only and the waste table covers every site. It does mean the headline improvement is not a statement about the Group's total output.
The yardstick is changing
The metric itself is now being retired. Volkswagen are moving to an impact points method targeting a 37.5% cut in absolute site impacts by 2030 against 2018, and say progress on it will be communicated publicly in the future. No figure has been published yet.
Their materials goal runs further out. The Group aims for 40% circular materials in passenger cars and light commercial vehicles by 2040, applied to vehicle projects starting production from that year onwards and excluding China.
How Volkswagen compares with BMW and Mercedes-Benz
Divide the 2025 total by the 8.866 million vehicles the Group built and the result is 347.9 kg of waste per vehicle, which lands in the same band as their German peers.
Mercedes-Benz report 358.1 kg per car built in the same year, so the two sit within eleven kilograms of each other. BMW's 851,830 tonnes is the third German figure, from a group that builds a fraction as many vehicles.
Those numbers are not drawn on identical boundaries, so they read as a range rather than a ranking. BMW count their production sites, Mercedes-Benz count every location they run, and the Volkswagen figure carries trucks and components alongside cars.
Frequently asked questions about Volkswagen's waste
Below are the eight questions that come up most often about Volkswagen's waste.
How much waste does Volkswagen produce each year?
Volkswagen produced 3,084,812 tonnes in 2025 across every plant they operate. The expected figure for 2026 is about 2.85 million tonnes, following a first half in which Group production ran 7.7% below the year before.
What is most of Volkswagen's waste made of?
Scrap metal, by Volkswagen's own account. Filings, stamping offcuts and castings make up the majority of their production waste, with steel dominating body production and aluminium coming off engine and transmission lines.
How much of Volkswagen's waste is recycled?
Recycling took 82.8% of the 2025 total, and a further 9.9% went to reuse preparation or other recovery. By Volkswagen's own measure, 378,140 tonnes were neither recycled nor prepared for reuse, or 12.3%.
Why does Volkswagen report two separate waste totals?
One column covers the consolidated Group, the other what they call companies with operational control, mainly the Chinese vehicle and component joint ventures they run. The two are 2,547,290 and 537,522 tonnes for 2025, added together here.
Does Volkswagen report a packaging waste figure?
No. Under the European reporting standards, packaging means material passed to the user, and Volkswagen remove transport protection before handover, so none of it is counted as packaging in the report.
Did Volkswagen meet their 2025 environmental target?
Yes. The goal was a 45% improvement per vehicle against 2010 across energy, CO2, water, solvents and disposal waste, and they reached 53.0%. Disposal waste per vehicle was the strongest of the five at 81.9%.
How does Volkswagen compare with BMW and Mercedes-Benz?
Volkswagen land at 347.9 kg of waste per vehicle built in 2025, against 358.1 kg per car at Mercedes-Benz. BMW report a smaller total of 851,830 tonnes from a far smaller group. The boundaries differ, so read it as a range rather than a ranking.
How is the 2026 figure estimated?
Waste per vehicle is held at the 2025 rate and Volkswagen's own production trend is applied to it. The Group built 4,171 thousand vehicles in the first half of 2026 against 4,519 thousand a year earlier, a fall of 7.7%.
Images: Dietmar Rabich, Roger Wollstadt
