3. Treatment characterization methods

3.1 Hierarchy principle

The government, ADEME (the French Environment and Energy Management Agency) and industry have taken numerous steps to change the paradigm and move from a linear consumption economy to a circular economy, enabling us to reduce the quantities of waste produced, increase the useful life and lifespan of products, reduce the waste of raw materials and create value.

France has confirmed its commitment as a pioneering country in this field by proposing numerous action plans to encourage more responsible modes of production and consumption, enabling the "value" of a product or material to be retained as much as possible throughout its life cycle. This is how it came to impose, under the LTECV of 2015, a hierarchy between waste treatments listed...