GCC Waste Market Forecast to Top $104 Billion by 2031 as Collection Outpaces Treatment

The report describes the sector as moving from a municipal service to an investment market. It says partnerships with the private sector are attracting interest in industrial and medical hazardous waste, material recycling, metal recovery and the refining of used oils.

Collection is growing much faster than treatment. GCC states collected 283.5 million tonnes of waste in 2024, up 20.4% from 2023, but treated 69.0 million tonnes, an increase of 6.2%. Non-hazardous waste made up 97.1% of what was collected. Of the hazardous waste treated, 61.1% went through physical and chemical treatment, resale and reuse, 21.6% was recycled, 15.5% went to engineered landfill and 1.9% was incinerated.

Most of the waste comes from construction. Construction and demolition waste rose 26.5% in 2024 to 226.6 million tonnes, up from 179.1 million tonnes in 2023 and 109.9 million tonnes in 2021. Between 2021 and 2024, construction output in the bloc grew 43.6%, from $130.7 billion to $187.8 billion, and the sector's workforce rose from 3.3 million to 4.7 million. The GCC Standardization Organization adopted a Gulf standard for sustainable buildings in 2025.

Municipal waste collected reached 48.8 million tonnes in 2024. Of the 57.8 million tonnes of municipal solid waste disposed of or recycled, 52.1 million tonnes went to engineered landfill and 5.7 million tonnes were recycled.

Industrial hazardous waste output rose 19.5% to 6.4 million tonnes, and hazardous medical waste rose 14.3% to 134.6 thousand tonnes. The region has 28 facilities for recycling hazardous waste and recovering metals, 43 approved used-oil refining facilities and 27 medical waste incineration sites with a combined design capacity of 176.1 thousand tonnes. GCC states exported 0.8 million tonnes of hazardous waste in 2024 under the Basel Convention, most of it for recycling or metal recovery.

The UAE collected the most agricultural waste in the bloc, 2.4 million tonnes, followed by Kuwait at 0.6 million tonnes. The report said the UAE, Qatar, Oman and Kuwait each scored 100 out of 100 on solid waste management in Yale University's Environmental Performance Index. Bahrain scored 98.51 and Saudi Arabia 92.27.