In 2026, the European Week for Waste Reduction (EWWR) focuses on Material Sufficiency — a powerful approach to reducing waste by rethinking how much we consume, what we truly need, and how we organise our systems of production and consumption.
Sufficiency is about ensuring wellbeing for all while respecting planetary boundaries. It challenges us to move beyond managing waste and instead prevent it at its source.
Watch this ADEME video, which presents the concept of sobriety at the territorial scale and explains it through concrete examples across different areas: mobility, urban planning, tourism, water, buildings, digital technology, and consumption. The video is in French, but you can enable YouTube subtitles in your language.
The IPCC defines sufficiency as policies, measures and everyday practices that reduce the demand for energy, materials, land and water — while delivering human wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries. In simple terms, sufficiency means: Focusing on what we truly need to live well and organising our societies to meet those needs using fewer resources.
Sufficiency places wellbeing at the centre. It asks not only how efficiently we produce and consume, but also how much is enough.
Sufficiency focuses on the needs of people and thus on wellbeing. By prioritising the amount, level, and nature of goods and services that require resources, sufficiency is different from efficiency, which is concerned with reducing the relative amount of resources needed to provide a given good or service by technological solutions. Services and work-places closer to homes, an adequate public transport infrastructure accessible and affordable for all, vehicle sizes adapted to needs, shared building spaces and a more efficient living space distribution that avoids both over- and under-occupation, better-quality clothes, longer-lasting products, more plant-based food and decent access to drinking water for all, all have to do with sufficiency. Such changes require adequate policies. (Source: Sufficiency Manifesto)
The Circular Economy has driven important progress in sustainable resource management. However, many initiatives still focus on optimising existing systems, based on a traditional linear economy, rather than reducing overall material demand. If waste prevention is not prioritised, we will not reach the targets to keep humans’ emissions within the planet boundaries. Recycling alone cannot compensate for continuously growing consumption levels.
A sufficiency-based Circular Economy shifts the focus upstream:
Material sufficiency means redefining prosperity, which is far from asking for sacrifice or making all of us unhappy. It means:
The European Week for Waste Reduction challenges its community to adopt the sufficiency principle to rethink choices and behaviours, but also infrastructure and public policies, reaching the fair consumption space, where humans flourish while planet boundaries are respected to reach climate stability.
Source: A Climate for Sufficiency by Hot or Cool Institute
Material sufficiency is about redesigning our systems to ensure fairness, resilience and sustainability.
Thousands of actions across Europe already demonstrate that living well with fewer materials is not only possible — it is desirable.
Get inspired.
Organise your action.
Contribute to a resource-wise and climate-resilient Europe.
You can download below the EWWR 2026 thematic poster. Use it to inspire others to take action for the EWWR! It is available in Dutch, English, and French.
EWWR 2026 invites you to turn sufficiency into action through four key areas:
Thousands of initiatives across Europe are already demonstrating that sufficiency is practical and enjoyable but also beneficial not only environmentally, but socially and economically. Now it is your turn. Get inspired by the EWWR and share your actions to reduce the use of material resources not at the expenses of happiness, comfort and efficiency.
The section below collects recommendations and inspiring ideas to apply this new mindset for all the 5 EWWR categories.
Public authorities play a crucial role in shaping infrastructure, regulations and public procurement systems. You can lead by example and support resource-wise approaches:
Prevent waste in large events
The impact of large events on resource consumption is beyond any doubt. Their number and footprint make it essential to introduce sustainability as a criterion in their organisation. Although there are several factors that come together to make an event more sustainable, in practice one of the most relevant is the generation of waste and its management. There are an increasing concern and commitment on the part of regional and local administrations to make the large events organised in their territories greener, with private stakeholders also being increasingly committed to sustainability, as well as the participants of those events. However, the many aspects involved makes the challenge is often beyond the capabilities and resources. This is why the cities of Klaipeda, Krakow, Bologna, Malaga and the region of Central Macedonia in Greece came together to explore this field and identify good practices.
Businesses are key actors in reducing material use and reshaping consumption patterns. Sufficiency creates opportunities for innovation by focusing on durability, service-based models and customer trust. You can:
Be a sustainable SME in the touristic sector
As tourism SMEs are facing an increasing demand in more sustainable accommodation and hospitality services from tourists, as well as their local and regional authorities, which they want to meet, research show that the level of knowledge or skills often hamper these improvements. The TouriSME project, funded by the European Union’s European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency, gathered more than 60 SMEs from some of Europe’s leading tourism destinations – Spain, Italy, France and Cyprus, to offer them capacity building, study visits and other learning opportunities. This publication contains some 106 good practices coming from various SMEs in the tourism sector.
Activate sustainable behaviour in your fans
Sport organisations have a significant potential to influence certain behaviour, patterns and processes in multiple ways and from different angles – from the way they operate daily and organise events, the choices and new principles they put in front of their followers, fans and visitors and most importantly – the way the collaborate with their local and regional authorities. The increasing trend in “greening” sports is evident and many sport organisations are putting forward various strategies and roadmaps revolving around sustainability, and environmental management – spanning across various aspects such as waste management, biodiversity, food and beverage management, energy and water management and much more. The ACCESS project, with the Danish and Welsh FAs, FC Porto and GAA, wanted to narrow down the gap between the efforts of sport organisations and the targets and priorities of their local authorities and make sports contribute more to the bigger picture and to the well being of the local communities.
NGOs and civil society organisations are powerful drivers of behavioural and systemic change:
By building community-based solutions, you help make sufficiency tangible and inclusive.
Education is essential to shaping long-term change:
Empowering young people with the knowledge and skills to rethink material use is one of the most effective long-term strategies for change.
Everyday choices matter and collective action amplifies impact:
Sufficiency does not reduce quality of life, on the contrary, it enhances it by focusing on what truly brings value and wellbeing.
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