The waste hierarchy is a ranking of waste management options from the most to the least environmentally preferable. It is usually drawn as an inverted pyramid with five levels: prevention, reuse, recycling, recovery and disposal.
Prevention, or reduce, comes first, because avoided waste has no impact at all. Reuse keeps products in service. Recycling, the third level, turns waste into new raw material. Recovery, mainly waste-to-energy, extracts energy from what cannot be recycled. Disposal in a landfill is the last resort. The hierarchy underpins waste policy worldwide, including India’s Solid Waste Management Rules, and is the practical guide behind the circular economy: move every material as far up the pyramid as possible.
