What counts as "biowaste"?
Since 2011, article R. 541-8 of the French Environmental Code defines biowaste as "any non-hazardous biodegradable garden or park waste, any non-hazardous food or kitchen waste [...]". In practice, for a restaurant or retail professional, that covers prep scraps (peels, trimmings), plate waste, and unsold food — whether still packaged or not.
A three-category classification
Biowaste from kitchens and dining halls — what regulations call DCT (kitchen and table waste) — falls into three categories based on the health risk it presents:
- C1 — pet or ruminant carcasses, kitchen waste from international transport.
- C2 — livestock manure and carcasses, kitchen waste already in decomposition.
- C3 — kitchen waste, expired goods, dairy or eggs, with no identified elevated health risk.
An important point: C3 waste that isn't refrigerated or processed quickly degrades and drops to C2 status — which closes off most recovery channels and leaves incineration as the only outlet. Shortening the delay between production and treatment isn't just a matter of convenience: it's what determines which channel the waste can actually go through.
A physical constraint: 80% water
Biowaste is roughly 80% water. Regular collection of raw waste is, for the most part, transporting water — which weighs on both the cost of collection and the carbon footprint of transport. That's exactly what on-site dehydration is built to cut down.
For the legal thresholds and deadlines in detail: Regulations.