Whatever the nature of the waste (glass, paper-cardboard, plastic, textile…) recovery can be considered. It is defined as being the separation of certain waste materials or products for reuse and recycling. It can therefore take different forms:
• Recycling which consists of recovering a material to manufacture it into another identical form: this is the case of glasses, papers and boxes;
• Reuse which consists in recovering a material to manufacture it into another different material;
• Re-employment – as its name suggests – which is a new job, in the same condition, of a product or material recovered for a use therefore analogous to its primary purpose.

Recovery therefore offers the means to save natural resources and contribute to lowering the cost of waste treatment. In addition, of course, there must be a market for the recovered products. Indeed, systems should be created that encourage manufacturers, administrations and individuals to consume more recovered products.

However, faced with the development of these recycling techniques, a problematic arises: at what point does a waste recovered and reused in a manufacturing process cease to be waste? Federal regulations have used the concept of “ultimate waste”.

But the waste law is ambiguous because it states that waste disposal facilities by storage may not authorized to only receive ultimate waste. Consequently, the landfill will only be authorized, from this date, for ultimate waste. This means that the landfill no longer has the function of treatment, but simply the ultimate residue storage function. In addition, it defines this waste from waste only those which can no longer, technically or economically, be valued or treated to limit the polluting potential.

In addition, a circular from the Ministry of the Environment clarified as bottom ash (incineration residues) which can be used in the manufacturing of road surfaces are not ultimate waste. Another circular indicated that compost residues could also not be considered as ultimate waste insofar as it can be incinerated.

Nevertheless, the circular made it possible to remove this ambiguity which remained in federal law because it specifies that ultimate waste is not necessarily from incineration: the ultimate waste that can be put into discharge beyond July 2012 is defined as the non-“recoverable” fraction of waste and not as the only residue of incineration.

It also made it possible to recall that the restriction of storage enshrined in the law does not necessarily mean the disappearance of landfills. By 2022, the number will have fallen sharply, they will be much more under the supervision of the regulations and under the denomination of technical burying center. Raw landfills, on the other hand, must have disappeared.

Return to the natural environment

Such waste material reintegrates the transformation cycles that structure the physical environment. This is the case with incineration fumes, compost and methane from fermentation, slurry and sludge from sewage treatment plants, spread over agricultural land, and finally waste directly landfilled. Certainly, industrial incineration and composting processes lead to reintroduction of waste into the natural environment, but they also constitute a form recovery (for example, recovery of the latent heat of waste under form of heating or electricity).

Landfill, however, is a waste treatment process under reserves that its location obeys certain conditions and that it is exploited according to rigorous discipline. Professionals like Indianapolis dumpster rentals do follow legal guidelines when it comes to what they bring to the landfill and how they treat it, but not every junk removal company does so.

Moreover, it should not only be considered under the sole aspect of “waste treatment” but also as a means development of a site: parks, green spaces, sports fields, etc, which leads in a way to valuing the land temporarily allocated to dump.