{"id":9210,"date":"2025-09-15T13:55:25","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T11:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ingenius.ecoledesponts.fr\/?p=9210"},"modified":"2025-09-15T15:31:54","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T13:31:54","slug":"recycling-rather-than-disposing-of-urban-waste-the-new-role-of-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ingenius.ecoledesponts.fr\/en\/articles\/recycling-rather-than-disposing-of-urban-waste-the-new-role-of-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"Recycling rather than disposing of urban waste: the new role of cities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
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Credits: Pierre Andr\u00e9 Leclercq,CC-BY-SA license<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Urban living means housing, work, transport and entertainment – but also a significant amount of waste. Each resident produces 580 kg of solid household waste every year (Court of Audit, 2023 Annual Public Report<\/em>, Sector analysis) and the vast majority of the 150 liters of potable water that they consume every day (Public Water and Sanitation Services Observatory – Overview of Services and Their Performance in 2022) ends up going down the drain. The past decade has seen a profound transformation of urban waste management. The aim is to transform an entire system based on a simple principle – circularity. The local public authority has a central role to play. This transformation was the subject of a research project culminating in the publication of a book1<\/a><\/sup>, on which this article is based.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recycling urban waste: easier said than done<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As past research has shown, the invention of the French term \u201cd\u00e9chet\u201d, meaning waste, in the late 19th<\/sup> century coincided with a transformation in how these materials were managed by cities, as they became extremely widespread due to urbanization, creating health and environmental problems2<\/a><\/sup>. This concern for hygiene led to the creation and development of specific infrastructure throughout the entire 20th<\/sup> century, to remove and process waste (landfills, water treatment plants, incinerators). However, this \u201cclean-up\u201d approach does not eliminate the environmental problem associated with urban waste. Firstly, because urban waste management facilities generate new forms of pollution (sewage sludge, incinerator smoke, etc.). Secondly, because the high volumes of solid and liquid waste generated by our urban lifestyles are an indicator of the now-critical pressure on natural resources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the context in which the idea of replacing the \u201clinear\u201d approach of waste disposal with a new \u201ccircular\u201d approach was born. The principle is simple: in what we throw away, there are materials and components that can be recovered and used in new manufacturing processes to replace inputs extracted from natural resources. In conceptual terms, this refers to secondary raw materials, or processes such as urban mining. However, this simple idea requires a profound transformation of pre-existing urban waste management practices: changing consumer behavior (prevention), modifying existing infrastructure, and developing new operators and economic models to gather, extract and recycle materials and objects. In other words, it is a question of changing the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The turning point of the 2010s, a new regulatory path<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Recent years have seen a unique chain of events in the history of urban waste management in France. Waste management systems in cities began to adopt a circular approach in 2010-2020, under the impulse of a series of legislative texts: the \u201cWaste\u201d Directive (2008\/98\/EC of 19 November 2008<\/a>), the Law on Energy Transition for Green Growth<\/a> (2015), and the Anti-Waste and Circular Economy Law<\/a> (2020). These new regulations mainly apply to urban authorities, historically responsible for urban waste management, whose practices were at the very least examined critically, if not shaken up. While these new regulations have been applied in new national and local planning documents, it is not enough in order to ensure the effective implementation of circular urban waste management. A study undertaken between 2019 and 2022 in the Lyon urban area sought to describe and understand how this circular shift in regulations had translated into actual operations and practices in urban waste management3<\/a><\/sup>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the main takeaways was that circular management does not originate from a well-defined plan or set of implementation procedures, but occurs via a multitude of projects, initiatives and experiments. These affect a range of segments and functions in the urban waste management ecosystem: citizen practices, existing infrastructure and private waste management operators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pulling out all the stops: multiple operational projects with uncertain results<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Lyon study analyzed several of these projects. On the infrastructure side: a project seeking to facilitate sorting of household waste for residents in a dense urban zone, by turning a river barge into a floating recycling center; and a project that equipped a new water treatment plant with a sludge digester<\/a>, producing biogas that was fed back into the urban gas network. On the operator side: a program supporting local entrepreneurial projects focused on avoiding and\/or redirecting waste (circular economy). On the citizen side: a project to co-design and incubate innovative solutions for sorting waste at source, particularly in collective housing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these projects are tests, experiments, and examples of trial & error that sometimes lead to sustainable transformations of modes of management, but also, as observed, can end in failure with the initiative abandoned: the floating recycling barge no longer exists in Lyon but has been tested in other areas, and the entrepreneurial support program was not renewed, but the city of Lyon is still committed to backing sectors of the circular economy. Co-designing a waste sorting system in collective social housing requires commitment from the project leaders, but the incubation measures for the aforementioned project were not clearly defined. These uncertain fates are a clear sign that moving from linear management, founded on the principle of \u201cinput\/output\u201d, to a form of management based on multiple loops is far from an easy process. They also show that experimental projects are not enough to transform urban waste management practices. They are only one aspect of a broader sociotechnical transformation process, which affects the three traditional components of the urban waste management system: the infrastructure, the operators and above all, the public authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Local public authorities at the center of a transformation process much greater than them<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

 The Lyon study highlights the key position and decisive role of the local public authority (intermunicipal coordination) in the implementation of circular waste management. It has a range of different means of action:<\/p>\n\n\n\n