3. Recycling

Among the various treatment methods, material recycling seems to be the one currently favored by legislators. Recycling is in fact part of both waste management (by reducing environmental impact) and natural resource management (by avoiding over-exploitation, particularly in the case of non-renewable resources). It is thus a fully-fledged and essential means of waste management, insofar as it helps to reduce the volume of waste to be disposed of, while avoiding the additional extraction of raw materials.

Recycling, by returning the material to its raw material, makes it possible to manufacture a similar product (internal or high-value recycling) or a different product (external or low-value recycling). In the former case, when recycling results in new packaging, it constitutes a form of reuse that seems economically and ecologically more justified than traditional...