Generic term encompassing the remployment, reuse, recycling or regeneration of waste.
Recycling
Direct re-introduction of a waste type into the production cycle from which it originates as a total or partial replacement for a new material. For example, melting down broken bottles to make new ones. Newspapers, magazines and glass can be recycled if they are selectively collected. Textile products and fermentable materials cannot be recycled.
Regeneration
Physical or chemical procedure, which provides waste with the necessary characteristics needed to allow it to be used as a replacement for a new raw material. For example: recycled paper re-generated by de-inking.
Residual waste
Waste, resulting or not from processing, which is no longer likely to be processed in the current technical and economic conditions. The recoverable fraction has either already been extracted or the waste’s pollutant or hazardous nature been reduced (often, but not necessarily, “waste resulting from waste”).
Re-use
Use of waste for a similar purpose (for example, returnable bottles) or a different purpose from that for which the material was originally intended (for example, using tyres to protect the hull of trawlers).
Reverse osmosis
A filtration process which consists in exerting on water a pressure higher than the osmotic pressure, in order to force it through a semi-permeable membrane, in the opposite direction of the natural process of osmosis. This technique is used, for example, in the production of drinking water from salt or brackish water. It retains particles from 0.01 to 1 nanometers in size.
Rhizopur
A treatment process for wastewater consisting in the combination of two biological techniques : a bacterial bed and a biological filter on planted bed of reeds.