France Cuts Waste by 44%, but Ivry Invests €1.4 Billion in Its Incinerator

French grey bins have never been lighter. Yet on the outskirts of Paris, a colossal industrial project has been under way since 2018. How to explain that as residual waste drops sharply, hundreds of millions continue to be invested in incineration?

In Ivry, a giant born in 1969 must yield to a completely rebuilt plant

On the edge of Paris, the scene resembles the setting of an old industrial film. The Ivry-Paris XIII incinerator has been in operation since 1969 and receives waste from a catchment of roughly 1.4 million inhabitants. After several modernizations, the facility is now reaching the end of an exceptionally long life for a piece of equipment of this kind.

Its successor, named L’Interval, has been under construction since late 2018. A striking feature of the project: the new plant is being built right beside the old one, which must continue to operate during the works. This delicate industrial coexistence partly explains, according to Syctom, the difficulties and delays that have accumulated.

The commissioning, once hoped for much earlier, is now scheduled to occur no later than November 2026 according to Syctom. An incident during testing in 2025 notably interrupted the timetable. Meanwhile, the historic installation continues to burn waste, even though it has surpassed fifty-five years of operation.

As the project advances, France’s residual-waste volume is shrinking visibly

That is where the story becomes striking. According to the ADEME MODECOM 2024 campaign, a French person today produces an average of 223.5 kg of residual household waste per year. Since 1993, the decline amounts to 172 kg per person, or about 44%. In just a few decades, the fuel for incinerators has therefore become seriously scarcer.

This drop does not come solely from changes in consumption patterns. The extension of the yellow bin, new recycling streams, and the sorting of biowaste gradually reduce what ends up in the grey bin. And the potential remains immense: ADEME estimates that nearly seven out of ten items in it could still be sorted or valorised differently.

The new plant will burn half as much, and this detail changes the entire debate

The most telling figure comes from Syctom itself. The old site could process around 700,000 tonnes per year. The Interval will cap this capacity at 350,000 tonnes, i.e., an incineration capacity halved. The designers thus sized the new plant to directly incorporate the anticipated drop in residual waste.

This downsizing helps nuance the image of an ever-larger incinerator. But it also raises another question: how far can those tonnages still fall? Between 2017 and the latest available national data, residual waste per inhabitant has moved from 252.7 to 223.5 kg. The trajectory is far from trivial.

This is exactly what has fueled for years the criticisms from associations advocating zero waste. As early as 2015, the B’OM alternative plan proposed prioritizing prevention, biowaste, and improved sorting, with supporters estimating a budget of 200 million euros. A militant proposal, indeed, but revealing a genuine model choice.

Behind the tonnes and the millions, the real battle now concerns what must burn

Incineration carries a powerful argument: it not only makes waste disappear. In Ivry, the heat released produces steam intended for the Paris heating network, as well as electricity. Replacing this capacity too quickly therefore requires thinking simultaneously about waste, energy, and the remaining treatment options.

Yet another reality complicates the equation. In 2024, the grey bins still contained 32% biowaste and 27% papers or packaging normally destined for sorting. In other words, a large portion of what could feed future furnaces would theoretically no longer be meant to enter them.

The Interval could thus become the symbol of a peculiar transition: a new plant, built to last for decades, facing a society that is precisely trying to burn fewer and fewer things. The question may soon no longer be about whether the incinerator is large enough, but how long its 350,000 tonnes will remain necessary.