[Some aspects of the management of house-hold refuse]

Each day the average Frenchman produces near 1 kg of HHR, mainly paper and cardboard, vegetal and animal putrescible residues, glass, plastics, metals, ashes,... giving four important linked fractions of recyclable, biodegradable, combustible and inert matters. Production and precollection of HHR are of direct concern for the user, mainly in the collective housing; but the rubbish chute acts as a brake to the selective collection of HHR, which is one aspect of the valorization process of HHR, growing up in France. Three other treatments are used: combustion in plants with or without energy recovery, biological degradation of HHR as a compost used in agriculture, and dumping on or in the ground. All of them have advantages and disadvantages and then they must be used in complement of each other. The treatment units have some pollution effects on the environment and must be watched. Treatment refuses and solid, liquid or gaseous pollutants must be managed as much as HHR themselves. Three examples of collection-treatment-elimination french units are briefly described in Dunkerque (a mean town with selective collection), Bourgneuf-en-Mauges (a rural country with biological treatment and dumping) and Paris (a big town with a new incineration plan). Then the state of the management of HHR in France in 1989 is described with special attention to collection (99.4% of the population), recovery of glass (25%) and paper-cardboard (42%) and authorized treatment (94%) as dumping (43%), incineration (40.5%) and biological (7.5%). Accent is made about the importance of prevention (decrease of refuse production, way of consumption and life style, education of the masses) and of a good management of the HHR and of their treatment refuses and pollutants to limit environmental degradation.