Pages of Interest

EU Waste catalogue
Bullet UK Environment Agency site
Bullet European Environment Agency site


Recovery

The Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC) states that “recovery” shall mean any of the operations listed in Annex II to the Directive.

These operations are:

R1 Use principally as a fuel or other means to generate energy
R2 Solvent reclamation/regeneration
R3 Recycling/reclamation of organic substances which are not used as solvents (including composting and other biological transformation processes) (**)
R4 Recycling/reclamation of metals and metal compounds
R5 Recycling/reclamation of other inorganic materials (***)
R6 Regeneration of acids and bases
R7 Recovery of components used for pollution abatement
R8 Recovery of components from catalysts
R9 Oil re-refining or other reuses of oil
R10 Land treatment resulting in benefit to agriculture or ecological improvement
R11 Use of waste obtained from any of the operations numbered R1 to R10
R12 Exchange of waste for submission to any of the operations numbered R1 – R11 (****)
R13 Storage of waste pending any of the operations numbered R1 to R12 (excluding temporary storage, pending collection, on the site where the waste is produced) (*****)

(*) This includes incineration facilities dedicated to the processing of municipal waste only where their energy efficiency is equal to or above:

  • 0,60 for installations in operation and permitted in accordance with applicable Community legislation before 1 January 2009
  • 0,65 for installations permitted after 31 December 2008

    • (**) This includes gasification and pyrolisis using the components as chemicals

    (***) This includes soil cleaning resulting in recovery of the soil and recycling of inorganic construction materials

    (***) If there is no other R code appropriate, this can include preliminary operations prior to recovery including pre-processing such as, inter alia, dismantling, sorting, crushing, compacting, pelletising, drying, shredding, conditioning, repackaging, separating, blending or mixing prior to submission to any of the operations numbered R1 to R11

    (****) Temporary storage means preliminary storage according to point (10) of Article 3