6. Wastewater treatment

Most domestic wastewater is collected and treated in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) before being discharged into the natural environment: this is known as collective sanitation. For a proportion of the population, depending on the type of housing and the choice made by local authorities, sanitation can be individual (or autonomous): this is known as non-collective sanitation (ANC). In 2020, according to the Observatoire des services publics , 54.5 million inhabitants were served by a collective wastewater network (length 423,000 km) and 12.4 million...