Essential Waste Management Terms & Definitions

Residue Definitions

Residue (Generic): Any product in solid, liquid, or gas form from an extraction, processing, or use process that is worthless to the owner, who decides to discard it.

Residue (Legal): Any substance or object belonging to any of the categories listed in the annex to this law, which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard. This consideration also applies to items listed in the European Waste Catalogue (EWC), approved by Community institutions.

Urban and Municipal Waste

Urban and Municipal Waste: Waste generated in private homes, commercial establishments, offices, and service industries, and those that do not have hazardous classifications, which by their nature and composition can be likened to waste produced in the aforementioned places and activities.

Hazardous Waste

Hazardous Waste: Waste listed as hazardous, including containers that have contained such substances.

Waste Prevention

Prevention: The set of measures to prevent waste generation or to ensure its reduction, including the amount of hazardous substances or contaminants within it.

Waste Producer

Producer: Any natural or legal person whose activity, excluding household consumption, produces waste or who carries out pre-processing, mixing, or other operations resulting in a change in the nature or composition of this waste. An importer or buyer of waste in any Member State of the European Union will also be considered a producer.

Waste Holder

Holder: The producer of the waste or the natural or legal person who possesses it and does not have the status of a waste management company.

Waste Manager

Manager: The person or entity, public or private, who performs any of the operations involved in waste management, whether or not they are the producer of the waste.

Waste Management

Management: The collection, storage, transport, recovery, and disposal of waste, including the monitoring of these activities and the oversight of disposal sites or landfills after closure.

Reuse Definition

Reuse: The use of a product for the same purpose for which it was originally designed.

Understanding Recycling

Recycling: The processing of waste within a production process for its original purpose or for other purposes, including composting and biomethanization, but excluding incineration with energy recovery.

Waste Recovery

Recovery: Any procedure that allows the use of resources contained in waste without endangering human health and without using methods that could harm the environment.

Waste Disposal

Disposal: Any procedure aimed at the disposal or destruction of waste, in whole or in part, carried out without endangering human health and without using methods that could harm the environment.

Waste Collection

Collection: All operations of collecting, sorting, grouping, or preparing waste for transport.

Selective Waste Collection

Selective Collection: The system of separate collection of fermentable organic materials, recyclable materials, and any other separate collection system that allows the separation of recoverable materials contained in waste.

Waste Storage

Storage: Temporary storage of waste prior to recovery or disposal, for less than two years or six months in the case of hazardous waste, unless lower limits are established by regulation.

Waste Transfer Station

Transfer Station: An installation where waste is temporarily stored, unloaded, and then transported to another place for recovery or disposal, with or without prior grouping.

Landfill Definition

Landfill: A disposal facility intended for the disposal of waste on or under the ground.

Contaminated Soil

Contaminated Soil: Soil whose physical, chemical, or biological properties have been affected by the presence of hazardous compounds of human origin, in such concentrations that they pose a risk to human health or the environment.