Article 3 — Definitions

For the purposes of this Directive, the following definitions shall apply: 1. ‘waste’ means any substance or object which the holder discards or intends or is required to discard; 2. ‘hazardous waste’ means waste which displays one or more of the hazardous properties listed in Annex III; 2a. ‘non-hazardous waste’ means waste which is not covered by point 2; 2b. ‘municipal waste’ means: (a) mixed waste and separately collected waste from households, including paper and cardboard, glass, metals, plastics, bio-waste, wood, textiles, packaging, waste electrical and electronic equipment, waste batteries and accumulators, and bulky waste, including mattresses and furniture; (b) mixed waste and separately collected waste from other sources, where such waste is similar in nature and composition to waste from households; Municipal waste does not include waste from production, agriculture, forestry, fishing, septic tanks and sewage network and treatment, including sewage sludge, end-of-life vehicles or construction and demolition waste. This definition is without prejudice to the allocation of responsibilities for waste management between public and private actors; 2c. ‘construction and demolition waste’ means waste generated by construction and demolition activities; 3. ‘waste oils’ means any mineral or synthetic lubrication or industrial oils which have become unfit for the use for which they were originally intended, such as used combustion engine oils and gearbox oils, lubricating oils, oils for turbines and hydraulic oils; 4. ‘bio-waste’ means biodegradable garden and park waste, food and kitchen waste from households, offices, restaurants, wholesale, canteens, caterers and retail premises and comparable waste from food processing plants; 4a. ‘food waste’ means all food as defined in Article 2 of Regulation (EC) No 178/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 4 ) that has become waste; 4b. ‘producer of textile, textile-related or footwear products listed in Annex IVc’ means any manufacturer, importer or distributor or other natural or legal person, that, irrespective of the selling technique used, including by means of distance contracts as defined in Article 2, point (7), of Directive 2011/83/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 5 ), either: (a) is established in a Member State and manufactures textile, textile-related or footwear products listed in Annex IVc under its own name or trademark, or has them designed or manufactured and supplies them for the first time under its own name or trademark, within the territory of that Member State; (b) is established in a Member State and resells within the territory of that Member State, under its own name or trademark, textile, textile-related or footwear products listed in Annex IVc manufactured by other economic operators, on which the name, brand or trademark of such other economic operators does not appear; (c) is established in a Member State and supplies for the first time within the territory of that Member State on a professional basis, textile, textile-related or footwear products listed in Annex IVc from another Member State or from a third country; or (d) sells textile, textile-related or footwear products listed in Annex IVc by means of distance contracts directly to end-users, whether or not they are private households, in a Member State, and is established in another Member State or in a third country. ‘producer of textile, textile-related or footwear products listed in Annex IVc’ does not include manufacturers, importers or distributors or other natural or legal persons that supply used textile, textile-related or footwear products listed in Annex IVc assessed as fit for re-use, or textile, textile-related or footwear products listed in Annex IVc derived from those used or waste products or their parts on the market, or self-employed tailors producing customised products; 4c. ‘making available on the market’ means any supply of a textile, textile-related or footwear product listed in Annex IVc for distribution or use on the market of a Member State in the course of a commercial activity, whether in return for payment or free of charge; 4d. ‘producer responsibility organisation’ means a legal entity that financially, or financially and operationally, organises the fulfilment of extended producer responsibility obligations on behalf of producers; 4e. ‘online platform’ means online platform as defined in Article 3, point (i), of Regulation (EU) 2022/2065 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 6 ); 4f. ‘fulfilment service provider’ means fulfilment service provider as defined in Article 3, point (11), of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 7 ); 4g. ‘consumer’ means any natural person acting for purposes which are outside their trade, business, craft or profession; 4h. ‘end user’ means end user as defined in Article 3, point (21), of Regulation (EU) 2019/1020; 4i. ‘social economy entity’ means a private law entity that provides goods or services and operates in accordance with the following principles: (a) the primacy of people as well as social or environmental purpose over profit; (b) the reinvestment of all or most of the profits and surpluses to further pursue their social or environmental purposes and carry out activities in the interest of their members or users or society at large; and (c) democratic or participatory governance; 4j. ‘unsold consumer product’ means unsold consumer product as defined in Article 2, point 37, of Regulation (EU) 2024/1781 of the European Parliament and of the Council ( 8 ); 5. ‘waste producer’ means anyone whose activities produce waste (original waste producer) or anyone who carries out pre-processing, mixing or other operations resulting in a change in the nature or composition of this waste; 6. ‘waste holder’ means the waste producer or the natural or legal person who is in possession of the waste; 7. ‘dealer’ means any undertaking which acts in the role of principal to purchase and subsequently sell waste, including such dealers who do not take physical possession of the waste; 8. ‘broker’ means any undertaking arranging the recovery or disposal of waste on behalf of others, including such brokers who do not take physical possession of the waste; 9. ‘waste management’ means the collection, transport, recovery (including sorting), and disposal of waste, including the supervision of such operations and the after-care of disposal sites, and including actions taken as a dealer or broker; 10. ‘collection’ means the gathering of waste, including the preliminary sorting and preliminary storage of waste for the purposes of transport to a waste treatment facility; 11. ‘separate collection’ means the collection where a waste stream is kept separately by type and nature so as to facilitate a specific treatment; 12. ‘prevention’ means measures taken before a substance, material or product has become waste, that reduce: (a) the quantity of waste, including through the re-use of products or the extension of the life span of products; (b) the adverse impacts of the generated waste on the environment and human health; or (c) the content of hazardous substances in materials and products; 13. ‘re-use’ means any operation by which products or components that are not waste are used again for the same purpose for which they were conceived; 14. ‘treatment’ means recovery or disposal operations, including preparation prior to recovery or disposal; 15. ‘recovery’ means any operation the principal result of which is waste serving a useful purpose by replacing other materials which would otherwise have been used to fulfil a particular function, or waste being prepared to fulfil that function, in the plant or in the wider economy. Annex II sets out a non-exhaustive list of recovery operations; 15a. ‘material recovery’ means any recovery operation, other than energy recovery and the reprocessing into materials that are to be used as fuels or other means to generate energy. It includes, inter alia, preparing for re-use, recycling and backfilling; 16. ‘preparing for re-use’ means checking, cleaning or repairing recovery operations, by which products or components of products that have become waste are prepared so that they can be re-used without any other pre-processing; 17. ‘recycling’ means any recovery operation by which waste materials are reprocessed into products, materials or substances whether for the original or other purposes. It includes the reprocessing of organic material but does not include energy recovery and the reprocessing into materials that are to be used as fuels or for backfilling operations; 17a. ‘backfilling’ means any recovery operation where suitable non-hazardous waste is used for purposes of reclamation in excavated areas or for engineering purposes in landscaping. Waste used for backfilling must substitute non-waste materials, be suitable for the aforementioned purposes, and be limited to the amount strictly necessary to achieve those purposes; 18. ‘regeneration of waste oils’ means any recycling operation whereby base oils can be produced by refining waste oils, in particular by removing the contaminants, the oxidation products and the additives contained in such oils; 19. ‘disposal’ means any operation which is not recovery even where the operation has as a secondary consequence the reclamation of substances or energy. Annex I sets out a non-exhaustive list of disposal operations; 20. ‘best available techniques’ means best available techniques as defined in Article 2(11) of Directive 96/61/EC; 21. ‘extended producer responsibility scheme’ means a set of measures taken by Member States to ensure that producers of products bear financial responsibility or financial and organisational responsibility for the management of the waste stage of a product’s life cycle.

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Source: EUR-Lex CELLAR · retrieved 2026-08-09